Senor  Doctor  DON  JOSE  PARDO 

Constitutional  President  of  Peru 

1904-1908  and  1915-1919 


PERU 


FOUR  YEARS  OF  CONSTITUTIONAL 
GOVERNMENT 


NEW   YORK 
I  920 


PERU 


M 

\ 

o 


BIOGRAPHICAL  NOTES 


Senor. Doctor  don  Jose  Pardo  was  born  in  Lima,  February 
24,  1864,  as  a  son  of  senor  don  Manuel  Pardo  and  senora 
Mariana  Barreda  de  Pardo.  He  comes  of  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  families  of  Peru.  His  father  was  the  first  civil 
president  who  governed  under  the  constitutional  regime, 
from  1872  until  1876.  As  the  founder  of  the  civil  party — the 
most  important  political  organization  of  the  country — he 
brought  to  an  end  the  domination  of  the  military  governments 
that  had  followed  one  another  in  power  from  the  establishment 
of  independence.  Don  Manuel  Pardo  was  one  of  the  most 
eminent  figures  in  the  history  of  the  republic. 

Don  Jose  Pardo  was  educated  at  the  Institute  Lima  and  at 
the  Universidad  Mayor  de  San  Marcos,  where  he  took  the 
courses  in  literature,  jurisprudence  and  political  sciences, 
graduating  with  the  title  of  doctor  and  lawyer  in  1887. 

Appointed  by  the  government  as  secretary  of  the  legation  of 
Peru  in  Spain,  and  afterward  as  charge  d'affaires,  he  formu- 
lated the  defense  of  Peru  in  the  arbitration  of  boundaries  with 
Ecuador  in  1889,  the  decision  of  which  was  submitted  to  his 
majesty  the  king  of  Spain. 

The  process  of  arbitration  being  interrupted,  he  returned  to 
Peru  and  assumed  charge  of  the  administration  of  a  valuable 
agricultural  property — owned  by  his  family  in  the  north  of 
,the  republic — until  1898,  at  which  time  he  established  himself 
irt  Lima  and  devoted  himself  to  business.  He  founded  the 
Compania  Nacional  de  Tejidos  "La  Victoria"  and  the  Com- 
pania Urbanizadora  of  the  same  name,  and  he  was  made  a 
director  upon  the  boards  of  several  limited  companies.  He 
did  not  abandon,  on  this  account,  his  international  studies, 
and  he  conducted  courses  of  study  in  diplomatic  law  and  the 


210714 


IV  PERU 

history  of  the  treaties  of  Peru,  a  professorship  that  was 
offered  him  by  the  Facultad  de  Ciencias  Politicas  y  Adminis- 
trativas.  In  1900,  he  contracted  matrimony  with  his  first 
cousin,  senorita  Carmen  Heeren  y  Barreda.  When  don 
Manuel  Candamo,  the  leader  of  the  civil  party,  was  elected 
constitutional  president  for  the  term  of  1903-1907,  he 
intrusted  to  senor  Pardo  the  presidency  of  his  first  cabinet 
and  the  portfolio  of  minister  of  foreign  relations,  a  position 
which  he  filled  from  September  24,  1903,  until  May,  1904. 

The  lamented  death  of  sefior  Candamo  rendered  an  election 
necessary.  The  civil  party  chose  senor  Pardo  as  its  leader  and 
announced  his  candidacy  for  the  presidency  of  the  republic,  in 
accord  with  the  constitutional  party  and  the  civic  union. 

During  the  months  that  he  had  been  in  the  administration, 
senor  Pardo  acquired  a  great  reputation  for  his  initiative  in  all 
branches  of  the  government,  so  that,  although  the  democratic 
and  the  liberal  parties  supported  the  candidacy  of  the  former 
president,  senor  don  Nicolas  de  Pierola,  the  leader  of  the 
democratic  party,  in  opposition  to  senor  Pardo,  the  opinion  of 
the  majority  was  so  decidedly  in  favor  of  senor  Pardo  that 
senor  Pierola  withdrew  his  candidacy  before  the  elections 
occurred;  and,  the  elections  being  held,  senor  Pardo  assumed 
charge  of  the  government,  from  September  24,  1904,  until 
September  24,  1908. 

This  period  of  government  was  without  doubt  the  most 
propitious  to  the  progress  of  the  country.  The  citizens 
enjoyed  full  guaranties;  the  freedom  of  the  press  was  absolute; 
there  were  no  persecutions  for  holding  adverse  political 
opinions.  During  no  former  period  was  a  greater  number  of 
extraordinary  meetings  of  the  congress  convoked,  notwith- 
standing the  fact  that  the  government  had  to  face  a  respect- 
able and  well  organized  opposition,  composed  of  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  democratic  and  the  liberal  parties,  many  of 
whom  were  reflected  senators  and  deputies  during  senior 
Pardo's  administration.  The  opposition  followed,  on  its  part, 


PERU  V 

the  example  of  the  government,  and  it  also  showed  respect  for 
the  law  and  for  men. 

In  all  the  branches  of  the  administration,  active  labors 
were  accomplished,  and  senor  Pardo  was  able  to  carry  out  as 
president  many  of  the  plans  he  had  begun  as  minister:  an 
arduous  undertaking,  in  which  he  found  himself  seconded  by 
the  energy  and  decision  of  his  political  friends. 

He  maintained  strict  cordiality  in  the  relations  of  Peru  with 
all  the  other  nations,  especially  with  those  of  South  America, 
and  with  the  United  States  of  America. 

He  invoked  anew  the  arbitration  of  Spain  in  the  solution  of 
the  question  of  boundaries  pending  with  Ecuador.  The 
problem  of  the  frontiers  with  Bolivia  was  submitted  to  the 
arbitration  of  the  president  of  the  Argentine  republic;  the 
modus  vivendi  with  Brazil  was  prorogued;  and  a  friendly 
protocol  was  arranged  with  Colombia;  the  interrupted 
diplomatic  relations  with  Chile  were  renewed;  a  general 
treaty  of  arbitration  was  celebrated  with  Italy. 

In  respect  of  the  public  exchequer,  senor  Pardo  doubled  in 
four  years  the  government  income,  which  was  fourteen 
million  soles  *  when  he  entered  office,  and  twenty-eight 
millions  when  he  delivered  it  to  his  successor.  This  consid- 
erable increase  was  due  both  to  the  new  laws  that  created 
additional  revenues  and  to  the  development  of  commerce  and 
the  industries,  achieved  through  the  blessings  of  the  order  and 
well-being  that  are  fostered  by  enlightened  governments. 

In  public  instruction,  a  transcendent  reform  was  effected  by 
taking  from  the  municipality  the  administration  of  the 
primary  schools,  which  since  then  have  been  under  the  charge 
of  the  state,  there  being  organized  a  Direcci6n  de  Instrucci6n, 
and  special  revenues  being  created,  which  enabled  President 
Pardo  to  leave,  upon  the  completion  of  his  term,  three 
thousand  public  schools  in  operation. 

1  The  sol  is  equivalent  to  .4864  cents,  United  States  money. 


VI  PERU 

Senor  Pardo  took  the  greatest  interest  in  the  establishment 
of  a  national  steamship  company,  and  he  attained  his  object 
by  organizing  the  Compania  Peruana  de  Vapores  y  Dique  del 
Callao,  a  company  that  acquired  five  steamers  and  a  floating 
dock  of  seven  thousand  tons  for  the  port  of  Callao. 

During  the  recent  war,  the  country  has  experienced  the 
incalculable  advantages  which  have  accrued  to  the  maritime 
traffic  from  the  possession  of  national  merchant  vessels, 
without  which  the  commerce,  and  even  the  provisioning  of  the 
population,  would  have  suffered  enormous  damages,  as 
occurred  in  countries  that  were  lacking  in  this  very  valuable 
resource. 

The  government  also  gave  diligent  attention  to  the  war  and 
navy  departments.  The  navy  beheld  the  dawn  of  a  new  era 
with  the  organization  of  the  Escuela  Naval ;  the  acquisition  of 
the  cruisers  Grau  and  Bolognesi  and  the  war  transport  Iquitos; 
the  acquirement  of  a  supply  of  heavy  artillery  for  the  batteries 
of  Callao;  and  the  establishment  of  lighthouses  for  the 
Peruvian  coast. 

In  the  department  of  war,  senor  Pardo  concerned  himself 
equally  with  the  development  of  the  army.  He  enlarged  the 
scope  of  the  Escuela  Militar;  he  caused  the  law  of  obligatory 
military  service  to  be  strictly  enforced;  he  organized  annual 
maneuvers,  even  to  the  extent  of  calling  out  the  reserves ;  he 
instituted  national  military  target  practice  and  a  school  of 
marksmanship;  and  he  equipped  the  army  with  the  most 
modern  artillery  material. 

In  the  department  of  Fomenlo*  his  government  accom- 
plished undertakings  of  great  value  for  the  development  of  the 
undertakings  of  great  value  for  the  development  of  the 
country,  such  as  the  railways  from  Sincuani  to  Cuzco,  from 
Oroya  to  Huancayo,  from  Yonan  to  Chilete,  from  Ilo  to 
Moquegua  and  from  Puerto  Pizarro  to  Tumbes. 

1  A  department  of  the  national  government  charged  with  fostering 
and  protecting  new  enterprises. 


PERU  Vll 

Extensive  telegraph  lines  were  constructed;  wireless 
communication  was  established  between  Lima  and  Iquitos; 
and  the  erection  of  the  Palacio  Legislative,  the  Carcel  Central 
de  Lima,  the  Ministerio  del  Gobierno  and  a  number  of  student 
centers  were  undertaken.  Senor  Pardo's  government  brought 
before  the  congress  the  idea  of  studying  the  labor  laws. 

The  accomplishment  of  all  this  enormous  labor  enabled 
senor  Pardo  to  leave  the  presidency  with  a  great  reputation; 
and  amid  the  most  spontaneous  acclamations,  which  were 
lavished  upon  him  by  all  the  social  classes,  he  returned  to  his 
home  September  24,  1908,  delivering  the  government  to  the 
president  elected  by  the  people,  senor  Augusto  B.  Leguia,  a 
colleague  of  senor  Pardo's  in  the  ministry  of  senor  Candamo 
and  his  own  minister  of  Hacienda  for  three  years. 

Senor  Leguia  had  been  chosen  leader  of  the  civil  party  when 
senor  Pardo  entered  upon  the  presidency  of  the  republic;  and 
the  nation  might  logically  expect  that  senor  Leguia  would 
continue  the  same  policy  of  legality  and  national  progress 
that  had  been  developed  from  1903. 

Senor  Pardo  left  the  country  in  May,  1909,  in  order  to 
retire  from  politics,  and  he  took  up  his  abode  in  Paris. 

In  191 1,  the  most  important  fraction  that  had  resulted  from 
the  schism  in  the  civil  party,  after  the  first  year  of  the  new 
government,  besought  senor  Pardo  to  offer  his  candidacy  in 
the  presidential  elections  that  were  to  choose  a  successor  to 
senor  Leguia.  Senor  Pardo  declined  the  request,  and  he 
remained  in  Europe  until  the  war  broke  out.  He  returned  to 
his  country  in  November,  1914,  being  received  at  the  places 
where  the  boat  touched  and  at  Callao  with  great  demon- 
strations of  enthusiasm. 

Upon  his  arrival,  he  attempted  the  unification  of  the  civil 
party  by  proposing  a  formula  couched  in  the  broadest  terms; 
but  he  met  no  success  in  his  efforts;  and  this  induced  him  to 
abstain  entirely  from  all  political  activity  and  devote  his  time 
to  the  duties  of  the  rectorship  of  the  Universidad  Mayor  de 


Vlll  PERU 

San  Marcos  in  Lima,  to  which  he  had  been  elected  unani- 
mously by  the  votes  of  the  professorial  delegates.  During  the 
few  months  in  which  politics  permitted  senor  Pardo  to 
discharge  this  honorable  function,  he  instituted  plans  to  foster 
higher  learning.  He  created  chairs  of  foreign  languages  in  the 
faculty  of  letters,  and  he  organized  university  extension 
courses  by  means  of  public  lectures  and  by  studies,  at  popular 
centers,  in  history,  geography,  hygiene  and  drawing,  con- 
ducted by  the  younger  professors. 

Politics,  however,  imposed  upon  sefior  Pardo  other  labors. 
It  being  necessary  that  elections  should  be  held  for  president 
and  vice-president  that  the  republic  might  return  to  a  condi- 
tion of  constitutional  legality,  the  provisional  president, 
General  Benavides,  promoted  the  organization  of  a  political 
convention,  formed  by  a  hundred  delegates  from  each  party — 
the  civil,  the  liberal  and  the  constitutional — and  by  the 
persons  who,  during  the  last  ten  years,  had  held  office  as 
ministers  of  state,  senators  or  deputies.  This  plan  permitted 
the  participation  in  the  convention  also  of  members  of  the  old 
democratic  party  and  of  many  citizens  of  importance,  already 
retired  from  politics.  For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
Peru  and  of  all  the  South  American  nations,  there  took  place 
the  nomination  of  a  candidate  for  the  presidency  by  a  con- 
vention of  the  delegates  of  all  the  parties.  The  convention 
nominated  senor  Pardo  as  its  national  candidate.  The 
elections  were  held,  and  he  was  chosen  president  for  the  new 
term  from  August  18,  1915,  until  August  18,  1919. 

The  manifesto  that  sefior  Pardo  addressed  to  his  fellow- 
citizens,  and  which  will  be  given  the  reader  immediately, 
contains  a  synthesis  of  this  new  period  of  order,  of  respect  for 
law  and  of  progress,  disturbed  thirty  days  before  the  com- 
pletion of  his  constitutional  term  by  an  unjustifiable  revolu- 
tion. 

We  do  not  desire  to  add  anything  to  what  the  former 
president  sets  forth,  both  as  to  the  work  accomplished  during 


PERU  IX 

the  four  years  of  his  government  and  as  to  the  true  significance 
and  motives  of  the  revolution  of  July  4,  which  came  to 
interrupt  again  the  constitutional  life  of  Peru;  but  we  do 
desire  to  reproduce  the  words  that  senor  Pardo  addressed  to 
the  congress  in  his  message  of  July  28,  1918,  which  faithfully 
represent  his  thought  in  respect  of  the  manner  in  which 
political  parties  ought  to  solve  the  problem  of  presidential 
succession.  Unfortunately  the  parties  did  not  harken  to  the 
patriotic  voice  of  President  Pardo,  and  now  the  same  political 
groups  have  fallen  under  the  sway  of  an  imperious  partisanship 
which  has  driven  from  the  country  her  leaders  and  delivered 
her  over  to  a  relentless  dictatorship. 

The  following  are  the  ideas  expressed  in  the  message  to 
which  we  have  referred: 

The  new  policy  of  the  nation  continues  to  develop  in  accord 
with  the  elevated  and  patriotic  aspirations  that  gave  birth  to  the 
present  regime.  The  government,  loyal  to  them,  has  only 
sought  at  every  moment  to  serve  the  public  interests,  and  in  its 
honest  endeavor — it  is  a  satisfaction  to  me  to  recall  it — it  has 
had  and  now  has  the  valuable  support  of  the  majority  of  the 
parties. 

The  nearness  of  the  date  at  which  the  personnel  of  the  execu- 
tive power  is  to  be  renewed  again  brings  before  the  nation  the 
political  problem  in  all  its  fullness  and  gravity. 

Happily,  the  progress  achieved  during  these  last  three  years  of 
government — in  which  we  have  been  able  to  contemplate,  with 
legitimate  satisfaction,  the  establishment  of  the  constitutional 
regime;  the  building  up  of  the  national  prestige  abroad  through 
the  development  of  a  policy  of  good  understanding  and  cordiality; 
the  reorganization  of  the  administrative  service;  the  increase  of 
the  fiscal  revenues;  the  restoration  of  the  credit  of  the  state;  the 
carrying  on  of  work  demanded  by  respect  for  institutions  or  by 
the  great  public  necessities;  in  short,  the  resuscitation  of  all  the 
vital  powers  of  the  nation,  the  sure  harbinger  of  a  brilliant  future 
— points  out  to  us,  with  the  imperative  force  of  a  patriotic  man- 
date, with  greater  intensity  even  than  in  1915,  whenever  we  are 


X  PERU 

the  profilers  by  a  system,  adopted  then  for  the  first  time  in 
political  customs — points  out  to  us,  I  say — the  duty  of  giving 
to  the  problem  a  solution  of  concord,  which  will  prevent  the 
lamentable  strife  of  overweening  personal  ambitions. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  there  do  not  exist  in  the  programs  of 
our  different  political  parties  any  fundamental  divergencies, 
there  can  be  no  difficulty  to-day,  as  there  was  none  three  years 
ago,  to  prevent  all  from  uniting  in  a  solemn  act  to  nominate  the 
national  candidate  for  the  presidency  of  the  republic  who  is  to 
be  presented  to  the  popular  vote,  thus  laying  the  foundation  of 
a  vigorous  system  of  opinion  that  will  not  suffer  in  the  exercise 
of  the  public  functions  the  disturbing  influences  of  party  interest, 
and  that  shall  find  inspiration  for  its  acts,  as  the  government 
over  which  I  preside  finds  inspiration,  solely  in  the  country's 
general  needs. 

One  other  consideration  ought  to  determine  us  to  guard  zeal- 
ously the  victory  that  is  represented  in  the  support  of  our  civic 
culture  by  the  institution  of  conventions:  they  will  mean  the 
definitive  death  of  the  partisan  system  of  government. 

The  epoch  of  the  apogee  of  the  partisan  leaders,  which  has 
wrought  so  much  harm  to  the  republic  by  taking  people  una- 
wares with  deceitful  promises  in  order  to  make  them  victims 
afterward  of  their  own  despotic  and  authoritarian  tendencies,  by 
feigning  love  and  respect  for  institutions  and  laws,  in  order  soon 
to  cover  them  with  contempt  and  mockery  by  postponing  the 
permanent  interests  of  the  nation  to  the  satisfaction  of  their 
hatreds  and  passions,  ought  to  be  closed  for  ever  in  Peru,  which 
has  the  right,  by  reason  of  the  glory  of  her  traditions  and  the 
greatness  of  her  destiny,  to  be  governed,  as  all  enlightened  coun- 
tries are,  by  the  reasonable  rules  of  political  law,  and  not  by  the 
violence  of  inadvised  personal  ambition:  by  the  most  upright, 
and  not  by  the  most  audacious. 

Publicists  and  statesmen,  persuaded  of  the  decisive  influence 
that  the  qualities  of  the  leader  of  the  nation  exercise  upon  the 
life  of  democracies,  urge  the  necessity  of  withdrawing  his  election 
from  popular  effervescences  and  passions,  in  order  to  confide 
it  to  the  reputable  and  serene  judgment  of  the  legislative  assem- 
bly; and  even  among  us  this  plan  has  been  suggested. 


PERU  XI 

Without  considering  this  reform  timely,  but  rather,  far  from 
doing  so,  deeming  it,  as  I  do,  dangerous  in  respect  of  our  present 
political  condition,  I  hold  that  it  is  necessary  to  enrich  the  elec- 
toral habits  of  the  country  by  adopting  methods  that  will  lead  us, 
slowly  but  surely  and  progressively,  to  a  realization  of  the  demo- 
cratic idea,  which  consists  in  elevating  to  the  highest  magistra- 
cies, through  the  intelligently  combined  cooperation  of  all  the 
factors  of  the  citizenry,  honorable  rulers,  worthy  of  so  lofty  an 
investiture. 

What  democracies  seek  with  longing  is  the  triumph  of  moral 
superiority,  and  we  certainly  ought  to  be  brought  nearer  to  the 
satisfaction  of  this  fruitful  craving  by  the  nominating  conven- 
tion, which,  organized  upon  bases  as  ample  as  those  that  underlie 
the  platform  of  March,  1915,  shall  permit  all  the  tendencies  of 
national  opinion  to  be  represented. 

As  to  the  mere  functioning  of  the  convention,  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  entertain  a  doubt  as  to  its  happy  outcome,  because  the 
nation  is  now  aware  of  the  patriotism  of  its  directive  parties  and 
she  knows  that  for  them  it  is  a  question  of  loyalty  and  honor  to 
prevent  the  frustration  of  the  most  noble  aspirations  of  the 
present  hour. 

A.  R. 
New  York,  December  i,  1919. 


PERU 


Declaration  of  Senor  Doctor  DON  JOSE  PARDO 
President  of  Peru 

Although  driven  from  the  government  by  public 
force  and  compelled  to  leave  the  country,  I  do  not 
consider  myself  excused  from  complying  with  the 
constitutional  precept  that  lays  upon  the  president  of 
the  republic  the  duty  of  rendering  to  his  fellow-citizens 
an  account  of  his  acts  at  the  legal  conclusion  of  his 
term  of  office. 

Far  from  it,  it  is  for  me  a  matter  of  the  most  legiti- 
mate satisfaction  to  be  able  to  present  to-day  a 
statement  of  the  work  accomplished  by  the  adminis- 
tration that  was  overthrown  by  the  soldiery  on  the 
fourth  of  July  just  past,  thlas  making  it  clear  to  all 
honorable  consciences  that  the  governmental  action 
of  the  last  four  years  was  always  based  upon  the 
dictates  of  the  purest  patriotism;  that  it  respected  the 
constitution  and  laws;  that  it  fully  guaranteed  the 
free  exercise  of  the  rights  of  citizenship;  and  that  it 
adhered  with  loyalty  and  perseverance  to  the  program 
that  had  been  outlined  in  respect  of  the  fiscal  and 
economic  development  of  the  nation. 

FOREIGN  RELATIONS 

When  I  assumed  authority  for  the  second  time,  in 
August,  1915,  the  international  situation  of  Peru  was 
one  of  marked  isolation.  The  break  occasioned  in  the 
constitutional  life  of  the  nation  had  produced  a 
painful  impression  throughout  the  world,  by  reaf- 


2  P  E  R  tJ 

firming  the  universal  public  conception  that  only 
legally  constituted  governments  possess  the  lofty 
representative  authority  of  the  external  sovereignty  of 
states;  and  the  reduction  of  our  diplomatic  service,  to 
which  the  great  fiscal  crisis  of  1914  gave  rise,  had  also 
tended  to  weaken  appreciably  the  influence  of  the 
republic  abroad. 

Elevated  to  the  chief  magistracy  in  a  truly  excep- 
tional manner,  with  the  prestige  of  a  free  and  undis- 
puted election,  I  thought  that  I  ought  preferably  to 
address  my  attention  to  securing  the  restoration  of 
our  good  name  beyond  the  national  borders,  and  to 
this  end  I  considered  it  wise  to  send  accredited 
legations  to  La  Paz,  Montevideo  and  Buenos  Aires. 

My  desires  were  immediately  and  fully  satisfied; 
for  the  statesmen  who  directed  the  international 
policy  of  the  continent  knew  very  well  that  my 
presence  at  the  head  of  the  government  was  a  guaranty 
that,  in  so  far  as  Peru  was  concerned,  the  old  bonds  of 
fraternal  friendship  that  unite  her  with  their  states 
would  necessarily  be  strengthened;  and,  because  all 
the  peoples  remembered  that  my  past  acts  as  a  ruler 
had  been  distinguished  by  a  persistent  endeavor  to 
arrive  at  a  wise  juridical  solution  of  our  territorial 
questions,  while  avoiding  carefully,  and  without  any 
diminution,  certainly,  of  the  honor  and  integrity  of  the 
country,  every  irritating  political  incident  that  might 
contribute  to  the  perturbation  of  the  harmony  of 
America. 

When  the  United  States  declared  war  upon  Ger- 
many, my  government,  which  had  always  protested 
against  the  unrestricted  submarine  campaign,  placed 


PERU  3 

itself  in  full  harmony  with  the  policy  of  the  great 
republic  of  the  north ;  and,  in  order  to  accentuate  its 
attitude  of  frank  Americanism,  it  refrained  from 
declaring  its  neutrality  toward  the  conflict,  as  the 
practice  of  international  law  would  have  provided  in 
such  a  case. 

In  my  message  of  July,  1917,  at  the  same  time  that  I 
reproduced  some  of  the  noble  principles  proclaimed  by 
the  president  of  the  United  States  before  the  congress 
of  his  country  in  April  of  the  same  year,  I  said  textu- 
ally: 

Peru — which  in  all  the  acts  of  her  international  life,  has  sought 
to  incorporate  these  principles  of  justice  in  the  juridicial  and 
political  relations  of  the  American  peoples;  Peru,  which,  in  a 
not  remote  war,  sacrificed  to  these  ideals  the  blood  of  her  sons, 
the  wealth  of  her  treasures  and  her  future  hopes — could  not 
remain  indifferent  to  the  words  of  President  Wilson,  and  she 
renews  her  adherence,  another  time  still,  to  such  noble  purposes. 

Not  in  vain  will  be  the  sufferings  of  humanity  during  these 
years  of  the  terrible  war  that  draws  in  the  most  powerful  and 
peaceful  nation  of  history,  if  by  her  effort  there  be  erected  the 
new  edifice  of  international  society  upon  the  immovable  founda- 
tion of  justice  and  respect  for  sovereignty. 

Shortly  afterward,  on  September  5,  of  the  same 
year  of  1917,  the  head  of  the  chancellery,  Doctor 
Francisco  Tudela,  presented  the  following  declaration 
in  the  chamber  of  deputies : 

The  minister  of  foreign  relations,  ratifying  the  declarations 
contained  in  the  last  message  of  the  president  of  the  republic, 
and  reaffirming  the  thoughts  he  expressed  before  the  chamber 
of  deputies,  declares  that  the  foreign  policy  of  the  Peruvian  gov- 
ernment has  as  its  object  Pan  American  solidarity,  founded  upon 
the  principles  of  international  justice  that  have  been  proclaimed 
by  the  president  of  the  United  States. 


4  PERU 

On  October  5,  the  congress  of  the  republic  met  in 
full  session  at  the  invitation  of  the  minister  of  foreign 
relations,  and  it  approved  by  a  hundred  and  five  to 
five  votes  the  motion  of  senor  Jose  Balta,  a  renowned 
and  distinguished  member  of  the  majority: 

In  view  of  the  declaration  of  the  senor  minister  of  foreign  rela- 
tions and  of  the  principles  proclaimed  by  the  chancellery  and  by 
the  chambers,  the  congress  approves  the  breaking  off  of  rela- 
tions with  the  German  empire  proposed  by  the  executive. 

The  result  of  the  parliamentary  resolution,  while  at 
the  same  time  that  it  reflected  the  national  sentiment, 
openly  favorable  to  the  cause  of  the  allied  countries, 
was  the  best  denial  that  could  be  given  to  those  who, 
boasting  of  being  indifferent  to  the  supreme  interests 
of  the  nation,  and  stimulated  only  by  the  ignoble 
purpose  of  injuring  me,  kept  on  affirming,  in  every 
possible  manner  and  with  the  most  refined  malevo- 
lence, that  those  who  were  in  charge  of  the  government 
did  not  look  with  sympathy  upon  the  policy  of  a 
sincere  support  of  the  United  States  in  respect  of  the 
struggle  that  has  stained  the  fields  of  Europe  with 
blood  for  the  period  of  four  years,  and  which,  for  the 
happiness  of  humanity  and  thanks  principally  to  the 
powerful  moral  and  military  support  of  the  American 
federation,  has  terminated  with  the  triumph  of  the 
most  elevated  ideals  of  justice. 

However,  the  international  policy  of  the  government 
over  which  I  have  had  the  honor  to  preside  was  not 
minded  to  limit  itself  to  formal  declarations  of  Ameri- 
canism, but,  penetrating  to  the  realm  of  realities, 
although  without  ceasing  to  contemplate,  as  was  its 
duty,  the  actual  condition  of  the  country,  lent  to  the 


PERU  5 

allies  all  the  assistance  compatible  with  the  true  state 
of  the  material  resources  on  which  it  could  rely. 
Thus  we  granted  the  unrestricted  use  of  our  ports  to 
the  war  vessels  of  the  allies;  we  also  gave  them 
permission  to  utilize  the  wireless  service  of  the  state; 
and  when  the  illegal  destruction  of  merchant  vessels  of 
all  flags  and  on  all  seas  produced  a  profound  disturb- 
ance of  commercial  traffic,  we  took  possession  of  the 
German  steamers  and  ships  lying  in  Peruvian  waters, 
and  we  entered  into  a  contract  with  the  Shipping 
Board's  Emergency  Fleet  Corporation  by  which  that 
fleet  was  placed  at  the  disposition  of  the  government 
of  the  United  States,  thus  showing  that  the  adher- 
ence of  Peru  to  the  cause  was  positive  and  sincere. 

My  policy  in  the  international  sphere  has  been 
criticised,  however,  and  that  very  severely,  because  I 
did  not  lead  the  country  to  the  extreme  of  a  declaration 
of  war  against  Germany;  and  the  leader  of  the 
victorious  revolution  that  to-day  exercises  dictatorship 
in  Peru  had  the  temerity  to  charge  the  constitutional 
government,  in  a  political  speech,  with  having  let 
escape  "an  unique  opportunity"  for  recovering  the 
territories  occupied  by  Chile. 

I  ought  to  set  forth  with  all  frankness  that  I  was 
always  opposed  to  the  nation's  proclaiming  a  state  of 
war  with  the  German  empire,  because  I  have  a  very 
rigid  notion  of  the  circumspection  with  which  it  is 
necessary  to  direct  affairs  of  state,  and  because 
I  have  a  still  higher  idea  of  the  respect  that  govern- 
ments owe  to  the  good  name  of  their  country. 

To  declare  war  upon  a  powerful  people  that  devel- 
oped its  martial  activities  upon  a  stage  eight  thousand 


6  PERU 

miles  removed  from  our  soil,  while  lacking  all  the 
necessary  means  of  lending  effective  aid  to  the  armies 
that  were  defending  the  right,  would  have  been  to 
place  the  republic  in  a  situation  but  slightly  pleasant, 
which  verged  upon  the  borders  of  the  despicable,  if  it 
be  recalled  that  a  few  years  before,  and  even  at  the 
expense  of  the  integrity  of  our  national  territory,  we 
made  enormous  sacrifices  in  order  to  preserve  the  peace 
with  peoples  less  remote  and  less  strong,  when  the 
intriguery  of  the  Chilean  policy,  efficaciously  served  by 
the  imprudent  and  insensate  efforts  of  the  same 
functionary  who  is  at  present  intrusted  with  the 
management  of  the  foreign  relations  of  the  country, 
was  about  to  plunge  us  in  the  irreparable  national 
disasters  of  1909  and  1910  with  Bolivia,  Brazil  and 
Ecuador. 

Our  true  situation  has  been  so  well  understood  and 
appreciated  by  the  allied  governments  that  the  idea  of 
suggesting  to  the  chancellery  a  declaration  of  war 
against  Germany  never  occurred  to  any  of  their 
representatives  or  agents.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
manifestations  of  frank  sympathy  which  Peru  has 
received  from  all  of  them,  in  view  of  the  participation 
of  which  she  was  capable  in  the  world  conflict,  are 
public  property. 

It  would  not  be  worth  while  therefore  to  pause  to 
take  up  the  charges  and  condemnations  which  have 
been  heaped  upon  me  with  visible  hatred  on  this  ac- 
count, if  they  were  not  the  unquestionable  exponents 
of  the  inconsistency  that  dominates  the  authors  of 
them,  the  present  shapers  of  the  national  policy. 

I  consider  it,  indeed,  an  inevitable  duty  on  my  part 


PERU  7 

to  make  it  clear  that  never,  during  the  four  years  of 
this  second  administration  over  which  I  have  presided, 
the  same  as  in  my  former  term  of  1904-1908,  was  there 
presented  a  single  propitious  opportunity  for  the 
recovery  of  the  Peruvian  territories  shorn  off  by  Chile. 
Such  a  remarkable  occasion  for  the  achievement  of 
national  revindication  has  existed  at  this  time  for 
Italy,  a  great  power  whose  military  assistance  has 
weighed  considerably  in  the  fate  of  the  European  war ; 
but  could  it  be  said  with  honor  and  loyalty  that  the 
distant  support  of  Peru,  in  case  it  were  feasible,  would 
have  had  the  power  of  wresting  from  the  allies  an 
agreement  remotely  analagous  even  to  the  treaty  of 
London? 

However,  the  language  employed  by  my  detractors 
not  only  reveals  a  total  misunderstanding  of  the 
enormous  responsibilities  incurred  by  men  who  aspire 
to  the  management  of  the  destiny  of  a  people,  when 
they  address  it,  in  respect  of  grave  external  problems, 
in  terms  that  are  at  strife  with  truth  and  patriotism, 
but  it  also  demonstrates  an  absolute  failure  to  compre- 
hend the  new  juridicial  formulas  adopted  by  humanity 
since  the  entrance  of  the  United  States  into  the  great 
struggle  took  place  under  the  wise  and  generous 
inspiration  of  President  Wilson. 

To  seek,  at  the  present  moment  of  the  world,  to 
adjust  the  dominion  of  the  rules  of  law  in  the  society  of 
nations  to  the  text  of  political  conventions  is  to  over- 
look the  new  and  ample  orientations  that  are  opened 
to  the  existence  of  states  and  which,  now  incorpo- 
rated in  the  covenant  of  the  league  of  nations  assure 
full  reparation  for  all  the  historic  injustices. 


8  PERU 

Peru  has  welcomed  with  enthusiasm  the  radical 
transformation  that  obtains  to-day  in  public  law, 
because  at  all  times,  whether  at  the  dawn  of  her 
independence,  when,  seconding  the  lofty  thought  of 
Bolivar,  she  participated  in  the  congress  of  Panama  in 
1826,  when  she  took  a  seat  in  the  Pan  American 
conference  in  Washington  in  1889 — a  noble  exponent 
of  the  moral  superiority  of  Blaine — inevitably, 
throughout  every  incident  of  her  political  existence, 
she  upheld  the  principle  of  judicial  solution  as  the 
only  effective  means  of  settling  differences  between 
nations. 

She  has  absolute  faith  that  the  application  of  these 
norms  will  fulfil  her  national  aspirations,  because  her 
demands  are  legitimate  and  because  the  equality  of 
nations,  established  by  universal  concensus,  excludes 
all  distinction  "between  large  and  small,  between 
powerful  and  weak  peoples,"  by  sheltering  them 
beneath  the  same  conception  of  justice. 

That  the  policy  of  my  government  in  the  face  of  the 
world  war  has  shed  luster  and  respectability  upon  the 
country  abroad  is  revealed  by  the  fact  that  Peru  has 
taken  part  in  the  peace  conference  and  has  enjoyed 
precisely  the  same  diplomatic  representation  as  that 
assigned  to  the  belligerent  nations  of  America  which, 
by  reason  of  military  and  economic  deficiencies 
known  to  all,  were  not  able  to  lend  to  the  allied  powers 
any  other  assistance  than  their  moral  solidarity. 

In  other  respects,  the  appreciation  which  the 
greatest  peoples  of  the  earth  have  expressed  of  our 
international  conduct  stands  as  the  strongest  refuta- 
tion that  could  be  offered  to  the  systematic  and 


PERU  9 

heated  anathematizers  of  the  policies  of  the  chancel- 
lery. 

For  three  years,  and  without  overlooking  any 
occasion,  I  have  made  known  to  the  government  of 
Chile  my  desire  to  see  diplomatic  relations  reestab- 
lished between  our  respective  countries;  but,  unfor- 
tunately, this  desire  of  my  administration  was  not 
realized,  because  there  prevailed  among  the  members 
of  the  cabinet  of  Santiago  the  idea — from  which  I  had 
to  differ  fundamentally  at  every  moment — that  the 
reestablishment  of  legations  would  be  improper,  if 
this  act  of  reciprocal  friendship  were  not  preceded  by 
an  agreement  of  the  chancelleries  regarding  the 
solution  of  the  problem  of  Tacna  and  Arica. 

Deplorable  circumstances  that  took  place  previously 
have  united  to  aggravate  the  subject  of  political 
interdiction  in  which  we  live  with  respect  to  our 
neighbor  of  the  south,  and  which  also  compelled  us 
to  withdraw  the  accredited  consular  agents  whom 
we  had  in  Chile  and  whom  the  government  of  La 
Moneda  3  refused  to  grant  the  due  guaranties  for  the 
free  exercise  of  their  function. 

The  triumph  of  the  allied  cause  thrilled  the  national 
heart  of  Peru  in  November,  1918.  The  reintegration 
of  the  soil  of  France,  with  the  return  to  the  bosom  of 
the  country  of  the  provinces  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine, 
and  the  certainty  that  very  soon  Wilson's  lofty 
principles  would  become  incorporated  in  the  league 
of  nations,  which  would  mean  the  reign  of  peace  and 
justice  in  the  world,  were  memorable  acts  destined  to 

3  The  Chilean  White  House  or  executive  mansion. 


IO  PERU 

stir  profoundly  the  spirit  of  our  people,  who,  the 
victim  of  the  growing  Prussianism  implanted  by  Chile 
in  America  in  1879,  awaited  longingly  the  hour  that 
would  announce  the  final  overthrow  of  all  imperi- 
alisms. 

The  victory  of  law  must  necessarily  provoke  a  very 
different  echo  in  the  republic  of  the  far  south.  The 
international  policy  of  that  country — being  based  upon 
the  idea  of  force  which  her  diplomats  and  publicists 
always  proclaim  without  mincing  words;  h^r  army, 
organized  upon  and  instructed  in  the  principles  of 
German  tactics;  her  youth,  educated  in  admiration  of 
the  Prussian  methods  and  aspirations  of  conquest — 
Chile  must  have  felt,  with  the  overthrow  of  the 
German  empire,  a  bitter  and  painful  contrast.  When 
she  saw  disappear  for  ever  her  dreams  of  greatness, 
which  were  to  be  built  upon  the  violation  and  despoil- 
ment of  the  sovereignty  of  weaker  nations,  in  the 
spasm  of  her  keen  disillusionment,  she  was  unable  to 
find  any  other  means  expressive  of  her  profound 
hatred  of  our  country  than  that  of  making  the 
Peruvian  inhabitants  of  the  territories  which  she 
annexed,  as  a  result  of  the  war  of  the  Pacific,  the 
object  of  most  unjust  and  cruel  persecutions. 

Upon  the  expulsion  of  the  consul  of  Peru  at  Iquique, 
accomplished  by  individuals  of  the  Chilean  population, 
with  the  manifest  and  proven  complicity  of  the 
authorities  of  the  port,  there  followed  innumerable 
assaults  upon  the  persons  and  properties  of  our 
compatriots,  which  had,  as  a  natural  and  inevitable 
epilogue,  the  exodus  en  masse  of  thousands  of  Peru- 
vians from  Tarapaca,  Arica  and  Tacna,  where  they 


PERU  II 

were  living  engaged  in  the  honest  labor  of  industry  in 
its  varied  and  rich  manifestations. 

The  chancellery  of  Santiago,  by  means  of  circulars 
to  its  legations  abroad,  and  President  Sanfuentes,  in 
his  last  message  to  the  congress,  comprehending 
doubtless  the  reaction  that  their  vituperable  attitude 
was  to  awaken  in  the  conscience  of  humanity,  have 
attempted  in  vain  to  smooth  it  over  by  alleging  that 
the  departure  of  the  Peruvians  from  Tarapaca  was 
occasioned  by  the  paralyzation  of  labor  in  the  saltpeter 
works,  due  to  the  crisis  in  nitrate. 

Neither  the  number  of  the  expatriates  from  the 
south,  nor  the  simultaneous  and  violent  manner  in 
which  they  were  compelled  to  abandon  their  labor  and 
their  homes,  nor  even  the  habitual  occupation  in 
which  a  great  number  of  them  were  engaged,  lent 
verisimilitude  to  the  explanation  which,  after  the 
manner  of  an  excuse,  the  government  of  Chile  has 
sought  to  give  to  the  society  of  civilized  peoples;  all 
this  is  aside  from  argument  that  can  have  no  applica- 
tion in  respect  of  the  inhabitants  of  Tacna  and  Arica, 
a  region  in  which  the  deposits  of  saltpeter  are  not 
exploited. 

As  to  the  assertion,  made  equally  by  the  president  of 
Chile,  to  the  effect  that  the  consuls  of  his  country  in 
Peru  could  not  rely  upon  the  corresponding  guaranties, 
I  find  it  my  duty  to  reply  to  the  charge  by  making  it 
clear  that  they  always  received  from  the  Peruvian 
government  and  its  people  due  respect,  and  that  their 
retirement  from  the  national  territory  took  place  after 
the  consular  agents  of  Peru  in  Chile  had  been  with- 
drawn by  the  express  order  of  the  chancellery. 


12  PERU 

These  disagreeable  incidents  stirred,  as  was  natural, 
the  public  opinion  of  America,  and  the  president  of  the 
United  States,  animated  by  a  noble  spirit  of  fraternity , 
hastened  to  offer  his  friendly  action  to  Chile  and  Peru. 

My  government,  in  agreement  with  the  enlightened 
opinion  of  the  members  of  the  diplomatic  committee  of 
the  congress  and  interpreting  the  unanimous  view 
of  the  nation,  welcomed  with  lively  sympathy  the 
generous  action  of  the  head  of  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment, to  whom  it  was  my  honor  to  address  the 
following  cable  message,  in  reply  to  one  received  from 
him  through  the  medium  of  the  envoy  extraordinary 
and  minister  plenipotentiary  of  the  United  States  in 
Lima: 

To  his  excellency  Woodrow  Wilson,  president  of  the  United 
States,  en  route  to  Europe: 

I  have  received  through  the  medium  of  his  excellency,  Mr. 
McMillin,  envoy  extraordinary  and  minister  plenipotentiary  of 
the  United  States  in  this  capital,  the  telegram  of  your  excellency 
relative  to  our  question  with  Chile,  and  I  hasten  to  present  to 
your  excellency,  in  the  name  of  Peru,  the  most  lively  and  sincere 
expression  of  our  appreciation  of  your  generous  effort  to  main- 
tain peace. 

The  rupture  of  consular  relations  is  in  no  sense  an  act  of  hos- 
tility or  disturbance  on  our  part,  but,  on  the  contrary,  one  of 
prudence,  in  order  to  avoid  the  aggravation  of  agitations  and 
assaults  against  our  agents. 

We  have  not  been  able  to  prevent,  unfortunately,  our  citizens 
who  live  upon  their  own  soil,  occupied  by  Chile,  from  being  vic- 
tims, as  they  have  been  often  and  in  recent  days,  of  hateful, 
outrageous  and  grave  injuries  to  their  persons  and  properties. 

Our  country  asks  for  the  prevalence  of  natural  justice  and 
of  the  principles  of  civilization,  to  the  end  that  such  a  state  of 
affairs  may  cease  immediately  and  finally,  and  that  merited  pun- 


PERU  13 

ishment  shall  be  meted  out  to  the  responsible  authorities,  and 
that  proper  guaranties  shall  be  given. 

These  lawless  acts  demonstrate  once  more  that  the  powers  of 
oppression  against  which  civilized  nations  have  fought  exist  also 
in  a  certain  measure  upon  this  continent,  and  that  here,  as  in 
Europe,  there  are  parts  of  a  country  torn  from  their  natural 
nucleus  and  subjected  to  misfortune  by  the  dominion  of  brute 
force. 

All  Peruvian  hearts  go  with  your  excellency  upon  your  journey 
to  Europe,  because  they  profoundly  cherish  the  hope  that  your 
excellency,  who  is  the  most  authoritative  interpreter  of  the  mag- 
nificent ideals  of  the  juridicial  ordering  of  the  world,  shall  obtain 
in  the  conference  in  Paris  the  sanction  of  the  systems  and  organi- 
zations in  accordance  with  which  shall  be  effected  a  just  solution 
of  the  problems  that  disturb  our  life  and  prevent  our  devoting 
ourselves  with  confidence  to  the  work  and  felicity  of  our  people. 

Your  excellency  confers  upon  us  a  new  benefit  by  offering  us 
your  high  mediation  for  the  settlement  of  our  difficulties  with  the 
republic  of  Chile.  The  government  of  Peru  accepts  without 
hesitation  and  with  gratitude  your  excellency's  mediation.  The 
government  of  Peru  and  the  entire  nation  understand  that  your 
excellency,  as  the  creator  of  new  forms  of  liberty  and  justice  in 
the  common  international  life,  will  secure  their  application  in  our 
case  and  will  lend  us  your  valuable  assistance  in  order  that  there 
may  reign  between  these  republics  a  peace  based  upon  right, 
which  will  only  be  possible  when  one  possesses  what  is  his  own 
without  the  stain  of  conquest,  and  when  peoples  obey  the  states 
and  governments  to  which  they  belong  historically  and  which 
they  freely  desire  to  obey. 

I  salute  your  excellency  and  express  to  you  the  longings  of  the 
Peruvian  nation  for  a  happy  voyage  and  for  the  fruition  of  your 
noble  purposes  in  behalf  of  humanity. 

Jos£  PARDO, 
President  of  Peru. 

Desiring  that  the  whole  country,  in  an  act  of 
patriotic  solidarity,  should  assist  in  alleviating  the 
sad  condition  of  our  fellow-countrymen  in  the  south, 


14  PERU 

I  appealed  to  her  by  means  of  a  proclamation  in  which 
I  invited  all  the  social  classes  to  contribute  in  behalf 
of  our  martyred  brethren. 

As  was  to  be  expected,  the  idea  was  welcomed  with 
whole-hearted  and  general  enthusiasm,  and  in  a  few 
days  the  public  subscription  reached  approximately 
the  sum  of  $97,280.00. 

Unhappily,  the  executive  has  been  assailed  by  politi- 
cal interests  that  have  been  distinguished  by  their 
contempt  for  the  most  sacred  interests  of  the  republic. 
They  made  those  subscribers  the  objects  of  their 
attacks,  and  the  country  must  recall  with  a  strange 
sentiment,  a  mixture  of  reprobation  and  pain,  that  be- 
cause of  the  celebration  of  a  session  directed  by  known 
agitators,  in  the  course  of  which  reputable  members 
of  the  aid  committee  were  the  target  of  most  incredi- 
ble attacks,  and  the  assistance  which  our  society  was 
hastening  to  render,  in  response  to  my  initiative,  sud- 
denly had  to  cease. 

May  I  be  permitted  to  improve  this  opportunity  to 
express  my  appreciation  to  the  distinguished  group  of 
ladies  and  gentlemen  who  were  kind  enough  to  second 
the  patriotic  efforts  of  the  government,  an  apprecia- 
tion that  I  ought  to  extend  to  the  cultured  society  of 
Arequipa  for  the  immediate  cooperation  which  it  ex- 
tended to  the  state  by  taking  charge  of  the  organizing 
of  aid  for  the  children  of  that  department,  thrust  forth, 
as  they  were,  from  the  territories  to-day  occupied  by 
Chile. 

Alleging  reasons  founded  upon  the  absolute  right 
of  peoples  to  their  preservation  and  development, 


PERU  15 

General  Ismael  Montes,  former  president  of  Bolivia 
and  plenipotenciary  of  his  nation  in  France,  addressed 
a  note  to  the  minister  of  foreign  affairs  of  that  republic, 
in  January  of  the  current  year,  informing  him  that 
the  government  of  his  country  entertained  the  purpose 
of  presenting  to  the  league  of  nations  a  petition  in 
which  it  would  assert  the  claims  of  its  pretended  title 
to  the  territories  of  Tacna  and  Arica,  a  title  which  he 
considers  superior  to  that  presented  by  Peru  or  Chile. 

Shortly  afterward,  the  chancellery  of  La  Paz  ad- 
dressed a  circular  to  its  legations  abroad  in  which  it 
insisted,  although  in  terms  less  precise  and  less  clear, 
upon  the  aspirations  expressed  by  General  Montes. 

In  protection  of  the  indisputable  rights  of  our  nation 
to  the  definitive  sovereignty  of  the  provinces  of  Tacna 
and  Arica,  the  chancellery  replied,  under  date  of 
April  30,  to  the  Bolivian  circular  to  make  it  clear  that 
Perii  would  never  consent  to  renouncing  her  rights 
to  her  territories;  that  she  is  not  disposed  to  cede 
them  at  any  price ;  that  she  refuses  the  offers  of  com- 
pensation at  which  an  attempt  has  been  made;  and 
that  she  is  resolved  to  appeal  to  the  league  of  nations, 
assured  of  securing  the  most  ample  guaranties  of  her 
rights. 

It  is  hardly  to  be  conceived  how  Bolivia's  diplo- 
macy has  been  able  to  fall  into  the  error  of  believing 
that  a  tribunal  of  all  the  free  democracies,  like  the 
league  of  nations,  instituted  precisely  to  assure  full 
respect  for  the  sovereignty  of  states,  would  be  dis- 
posed to  accept  a  petition  presented  by  its  legation  in 
Paris,  which  does  not  limit  itself  to  invoking  the 
natural  right  of  Bolivia  to  have  access  to  the  ocean. 


l6  PERU 

but  which  undertakes  to  obtain  it  with  detriment  to 
the  national  integrity  of  a  traditionally  friendly  people. 

Throughout  our  existence  as  a  republic,  well-nigh  a 
century  long,  Bolivia  has  never  dared  to  dispute  the 
full  and  lofty  juridicial  right  that  gives  to  Peru 
domination  and  sovereignty  over  the  territories  of 
Tacna  and  Arica. 

If  to-day  she  justly  aspires  to  obtain  direct  com- 
munication to  the  sea,  her  statesmen  ought  to  seek  it 
in  a  formula  that  would  not  involve  an  attack  upon 
the  legitimate  rights  of  our  nation,  which,  to  the  fullest 
extent  and  animated  by  the  purpose  of  diminishing 
the  harmful  effects  to  the  economy  of  the  Bolivian 
republic  which  would  be  caused  by  the  mediterranean 
condition  to  which  the  implacable  victor  of  1879  re- 
duced her,  did  not  fail,  as  she  does  not  fail  to-day,  to 
exert  every  effort  to  enable  her  to  develop,  free  of 
hindrances  and  burdens,  her  commercial  activity  by 
means  of  our  railways  and  ports. 

The  defense  of  the  rights  of  Peru  in  this  exceptional 
hour  of  the  existence  of  the  nations  has  been  contem- 
plated by  my  government  with  the  most  exacting 
zeal,  of  which  the  wisdom  with  which  the  chancellery 
proceeded  to  make  provision  for  our  principal  lega- 
tions is  an  evident  manifestation. 

It  would  be  sufficient,  indeed,  to  run  over  the  names 
of  the  distinguished  personages  who  have  served  in  the 
diplomatic  representation  of  the  country  at  Wash- 
ington, London,  Paris  and  Brussels,  Rome  and  The 
Hague,  Rio  de  Janeiro  and  Buenos  Aires,  in  order  to 
give  incontestable  value  to  my  assertion  and  to  demon- 
strate in  an  absolute  manner  that  the  constitutional 


PERU  17 

regimen  had  not,  as  it  could  not  have,  in  the  direction 
of  foreign  affairs,  any  other  end  than  that  of  attaining 
the  greatest  efficiency  in  safeguarding  the  supreme 
interests  of  the  republic. 

An  intense  activity  in  propaganda  has  also  been 
carried  on  in  behalf  of  the  cause  of  our  country,  in  the 
most  important  centers  of  culture  of  Europe  and 
America;  and  in  this  fruitful  labor  we  have  had  the 
good  fortune  to  be  able  to  avail  ourselves  of  the 
invaluable  cooperation  of  distinguished  foreign  pub- 
licists, who  have  sought  generously  to  honor  Peru  by 
the  aid  of  their  prestige  and  talents. 

The  circulars  published  by  our  chancellery  under 
the  dates  of  December  2  and  28,  1918,  and  June  12, 
February  14  and  April  30,  of  this  year  have  also 
contributed  to  the  just  and  proper  molding  of  inter- 
national public  opinion  regarding  the  reality  of  our 
present  problems. 

That  the  foreign  policy  of  my  government  has  con- 
tributed to  the  honor  and  respect  of  Peru  has  been 
attested — rather  than  by  any  number  of  phrases — by 
the  extraordinary  missions  which  were  sent  to  us  by 
England,  Argentina  and  Uruguay,  in  the  persons  of 
their  illustrious  ambasadors,  his  excellency  senor 
Bunsen,  his  excellency  senor  Saguier  and  his  excellency 
senor  Brum,  the  president  of  Uruguay  at  the  present 
time;  in  the  decision  of  his  holiness,  Pope  Benedict 
XV,  to  raise  to  a  nunciature  his  diplomatic  represen- 
tative in  this  country;  and  the  same  decision  on  the 
part  of  the  United  States,  granting  to  us  the  corre- 
sponding right  to  elevate  our  representative  at  Wash- 
ington to  the  rank  of  ambassador;  and  finally,  the 


18  PERU 

participation  of  Peru  in  the  conference  of  peace  and 
in  the  signing  by  our  delegate  of  the  treaty  of  Ver- 
sailles. 

The  recalling  of  all  these  facts  enables  the  nation 
to  judge  whether  the  government  which  has  ter- 
minated did  or  did  not  serve  her  interests  with  fore- 
sight and  patriotism;  and  the  future  will  decide 
whether  revolution  and  dictatorship  guide  the  destiny 
of  Peril  with  greater  wisdom  and  efficiency. 

THE  EXCHEQUER 

The  moment  in  which  it  fell  to  my  lot  to  assume 
charge,  for  the  second  time,  of  the  management  of  the 
affairs  of  the  exchequer  was  exceptionally  serious. 

My  fellow-citizens  unquestionably  will  not  forget 
that  in  August,  1915,  the  economic  activity  of  the 
nation  was  considerably  restricted  as  the  result  of 
manifold  causes,  some  of  which  originated  in  the  state 
of  profound  political  disturbance  in  which  we  lived, 
and  others,  in  the  general  distrust  awakened  by  the 
first  symptoms  reflected  by  the  European  war. 

As  a  contributory  cause,  to  complete  the  pessimism 
that  filled  the  air,  came  the  condition  of  the  marked 
disequilibrium  of  the  public  treasury,  which  had  been 
carrying  for  several  years  an  enormous  floating  debt, 
accumulated  in  the  main  during  the  first  term  of 
government  of  the  present  d  ctator,  as  was  made 
known  to  the  nation  by  President  Billinghurst  in  the 
financial  communication  which  he  addressed  to  the 
congress  upon  assuming  charge. 

This  debt  had  not  been  contracted  in  order  to  set  on 
foot  public  works  and  great  reforms  in  the  country. 


P  E  R  U  IQ 

No;  no  greater  value  in  the  national  wealth  compen- 
sated for  these  considerable  charges  upon  the  national 
credit. 

The  floating  debt  of  the  government  in  1912  is  the 
bill  which  the  government  has  to  pay  for  the  mistakes 
of  every  kind  of  which  that  destructive  administration 
was  guilty. 

The  reduction  of  public  revenues  occasioned  by  the 
war  aggravated  the  financial  situation,  and  the  crisis 
reached  such  a  point  that  the  exchequer  did  not  pay 
the  administrative  debts  corresponding  to  the  first 
fortnight  of  August,  1915.  The  fiscal  credit  had 
disappeared  entirely.  The  economic  situation  of  the 
republic  reflected  the  financial  crisis  and  an  absolute 
lack  of  confidence,  growing  out  of  the  fear  that  a  new 
issue  of  bank-notes,  which  would  put  us  upon  a  basis 
of  paper  money,  would  be  necessary. 

Therefore,  although  the  value  of  exports  considera- 
bly exceeded  the  value  of  imports,  foreign  exchange 
was  unfavorable  to  our  money,  and  the  balance  from 
the  national  production  remained  abroad. 

Knowing  the  true  cause  of  the  bad  economic  situa- 
tion, at  the  same  time  as  the  importance  of  the 
national  resources,  I  did  not  hesitate  to  assume  the 
responsibilities  of  the  hour,  trusting  that  the  whole 
country  would  now  perceive  the  danger  to  her  future 
that  so  abnormal  a  state  of  things  involved,  and  that 
she  would  second  with  abnegation. and  patriotism  my 
efforts  as  a  ruler. 

To  this  effect,  in  the  statement  which  I  made  to  the 
nation  on  April  30,  1915,  as  the  result  of  my  being  pro- 
claimed by  all  parties  as  a  candidate  for  the  presidency 


2O  PERU 

of  the  republic,  I  presented  a  financial  program  which 
I  formalized  in  a  discourse  that  I  pronounced  when  I 
received  the  insignia  of  the  supreme  command.  In 
that  program,  I  indicated  in  a  concrete  manner  the 
policy  which  my  government  would  follow  in  this 
respect,  and  when  it  was  made  public,  it  immediately 
reestablished  confidence,  which  was  strengthened 
when  the  nation  beheld  the  constitutional  regime 
restored  and  the  efforts  put  forth  by  the  government 
for  the  prompt  execution  of  the  financial  measures 
proposed. 

The  bases  of  the  reforms  consisted  in: 

1.  The  strict  revision  of  public  expenses  in  order 
to  limit  them  to  the  most  urgent  needs  of  the  adminis- 
tration. 

2.  The  increase  of  public  revenues  to  the  extent 
necessary  to  meet  the  expenses  of  the  nation,  the  debts 
of  the  state  and  the  amortization  of  the  floating  debt. 

3.  The  solemn  engagement  to  the  nation  not  to 
effect  new  fiduciary  issues  of  paper  and  to  increase  the 
effective  guaranty  in  metallic  gold  that  might  serve 
as  a  basis  for  the  issues  made,  in  order  that,  at  the 
close  of  the  war,  the  conversion  might  be  accomplished 
in  the  manner  established  by  the  respective  laws. 

When  these  efforts  of  the  executive  potver  should  be 
embodied  in  laws  and  they  should  result  in  a  regime 
of  order,  rectitude  and  justice,  they  would  necessarily 
obtain  the  most  complete  success,  since  they  would  not 
seriously  affect  the  normal  administrative  process  nor 
deplete  the  productive  powers  of  the  nation,  singularly 
stimulated  by  the  high  prices  which  our  principal 
articles  still  command  in  the  world  market. 


PERU  21 

To-day  the  economic  and  fiscal  condition  of  Peru 
truly  is  flattering. 

The  figures  which  our  foreign  commerce  totaled  in 
the  last  three  years  proclaim  a  high  degree  of  pros- 
perity. They  are  as  follows : 

1916 $122,710,029.14 

191? 156,359,438.69 

1918 145,352,375-97 

In  1915,  the  foreign  trade  amounted  to  only  $83,- 

751,349-54- 

The  bank  movements  are  another  appreciable  indi- 
cation of  the  economic  progress  that  has  occurred 
during  recent  times.  The  following  data  will  give  an 
approximate  idea  of  the  capitalization  effected  by 
the  country  during  the  constitutional  period: 
Total  cash  in  the  banks, 

August  15,  1915 $7,697,502.77 

Total  cash  in  the  banks, 

June  30,  1916 8,376,395.77 

Total  cash  in  the  banks, 

June  30,  1917 14,208,984.32 

Total  cash  in  the  banks, 

June  30,  1918 16,549,502.20 

Total  cash  in  the  banks, 

June  30,  1919 25,371,988.83 

Deposits  and  credit  accounts, 

August  15,  1915 10,181,290.26 

Deposits  and  credit  accounts, 

June  30,  1916 11,922,131.43 

Deposits  and  credit  accounts, 

June  30,  1917 27,374,387.71 

Deposits  and  credit  accounts, 

June  30,  1918 37,652,642.30 

Deposits  and  credit  accounts, 

June  30,  1919 48,085,101.26 


22  PERU 

In  the  manifesto  which  I  addressed  to  the  nation 
on  April  20,  1915,  as  a  result  of  my  being  proclaimed 
the  candidate  of  all  the  political  parties  for  the 
presidency  of  the  republic,  I  made  a  solemn  promise 
to  free  the  country  from  the  menace  of  national  bank- 
notes by  means  of  the  steady  development  of  a  finan- 
cial policy  that  should  be  far-seeing  and  discreet.  I 
said  at  the  time: 

These  declarations  ought  to  convey  to  the  public  mind  the 
most  absolute  confidence  that  the  specter  of  a  national  bank- 
note has  been  definitely  removed  from  our  frontiers. 

The  reality  has  fully  confirmed  my  promise. 

On  June  30,  1915,  the  board  of  supervision  had  on 
hand  $1,376,155.92,  which  was  equivalent  to  20  per 
cent,  more  than  the  amount  of  the  issue,  at  that  time 
$1,149,783.74. 

On  June  30  of  the  present  year  the  stock  of  gold  with 
the  board  of  supervision  and  in  banks  of  New  York 
and  London  was  $23,015,903.23;  that  is,  87.27  per 
cent,  of  the  total  of  the  issue,  amounting  to  $26,370,- 

214.95- 

These  figures  constitute  the  best  exponent  of  the 
earnestness  with  which  the  government  devoted  itself 
at  every  moment  to  the  maintenance  of  the  value  of 
our  money,  and  to  which  effect  it  not  only  invariably 
took  pains  that  order  and  prudence  should  reign  in 
the  organization  of  our  fiscal  system,  but  that,  by 
favoring  importation  and  the  coinage  of  gold  and  by 
securing  it  for  institutions  of  credit  in  exchange  for 
bills  intended  for  circulation,  the  metallic  guaranty 


PERU  23 

of  the  check  4  was  appreciably  increased,  thus  defi- 
nitely assuring  the  stability  of  the  monetary  system 
of  our  country. 

The  administration  also  contributed  to  the  happy 
solution  of  our  monetary  problems  by  giving  solicitous 
attention  to  the  payment  of  the  loans  made  by  the 
banks  to  the  government,  in  pursuance  of  laws  number 
1968  and  number  1982. 

These  payments  being  made  with  all  punctuality, 
it  was  possible  to  reduce  these  credits  in  such  a 
manner  that,  from  $2,353,241,  to  which  it  amounted 
on  June  30,  1915,  it  reached  only  $1,072,829.91  on  the 
same  day  of  the  present  year. 

With  a  view  to  the  government's  being  able  to  pay 
off  immediately  in  gold  this  balance  against  it  and  in 
favor  of  the  banks,  of  $1,072,829.91,  a  part  of  the 
obligation  of  these  institutions  in  behalf  of  the  public 
for  the  amount  of  the  circular  checks,  the  respective 
bill  for  a  law  to  be  presented  to  the  congress  on  the  day 
of  its  installation  was  formulated.  This  bill  permitted 
the  making  of  an  immediate  delivery  in  metallic  gold 
of  the  balance  mentioned  to  the  board  of  supervision. 

The  proceeding  under  consideration  enabled  the 
exchequer  to  free  itself  of  this  obligation,  without 
assuming  new  debts  and  without  imposing  new  bur- 
dens upon  the  people. 

The  responsibility  of  the  government  being  dis- 
charged, the  banks,  in  which  there  was  still  a  certain 

*  The  fiscal  notes  issued  during  the  period  were  called  checks  to 
avoid  the  use  of  the  words  "note"  or  "bill,"  unfamiliar  and  disagreeable 
to  Peruvian  ears.  Hitherto  the  only  money  in  use  was  gold,  silver, 
nickel  or  copper  coin. 


24  PERU 

difference  between  the  gold  deposits  and  the  amount 
of  the  checks  received,  would  also  have  had  to  fulfil 
their  guaranties,  and  in  this  manner,  on  August  18,  at 
the  conclusion  of  my  term,  the  nation  would  have  had 
in  gold  on  deposit  the  whole  amount  of  the  circulating 
checks. 

This  plan  had  also  another  advantage  of  great  im- 
portance to  the  country :  that  of  releasing  the  tobacco 
revenue,  ten  per  cent,  of  the  net  product  of  which  was 
set  apart  to  pay  off  the  loan  made  by  the  banks ;  and 
upon  the  making  of  this  payment,  the  fund  available 
for  the  construction  of  railways  was  to  be  increased  by 
this  ten  per  cent. 

The  problems  that  resulted  from  the  extraordinary 
rise  in  value  of  silver  were  also  duly  considered  by  the 
administration,  and  it  solicited  and  obtained  from  the 
congress  the  necessary  laws,  by  virtue  of  which  were 
issued  the  bills  of  one  sol  and  the  nickel  fractional  coin 
of  twenty,  ten  and  five  centavos. 

Equally,  because  of  the  crisis  that  occurred  in  inter- 
national exchange  and  in  circulation  itself  as  a  result 
of  the  prohibition  of  the  export  of  gold  from  the 
United  States,  the  government  had  to  request  in  due 
season  the  authority  of  the  legislative  power  to  in- 
crease by  $14,592,000  the  amount  of  the  issue,  with  the 
guaranty  of  deposits  made  in  the  banks  of  New  York 
and  London. 

Notwithstanding  the  marked  misgiving  with  which 
a  good  part  of  the  public  received  these  last  acts  of  the 
executive  power,  they  served  to  solve  the  great  diffi- 
culties in  which  the  national  economy  was  involved 
by  the  notable  scarcity  in  the  circulating  medium,  and 


P  E  R  tJ  25 

they  also  prevented  the  withdrawal  from  commercial 
activity  of  large  sums  of  money,  the  amount  of  the 
balance  from  our  sales  abroad. 

In  order  to  free  the  tobacco  revenue  which,  as  is 
known,  is  set  apart  for  the  payment  of  the  loans  made 
by  banks  to  the  extent  of  ten  per  cent.,  until  the 
circulating  checks  shall  be  redeemed,  and  of  twenty 
per  cent,  from  the  date  of  this  operation,  and  above  all, 
for  the  purpose  of  enabling  the  government  to  pay  off 
punctually  in  gold  its  still  remaining  obligation,  thus 
enabling  the  banks  themselves  to  cover  the  amount  of 
their  issue  in  gold,  a  bill  was  formulated  that  was  to  be 
submitted  to  the  congress,  and  in  the  drawing  of  which 
the  ideas  for  the  public  good  mentioned  above  were 
contemplated,  without  involving  new  revenues  or  the 
making  of  any  loan. 

This  step  being  sanctioned,  the  guaranty  of  the 
issue  would  have  risen  to  92.42  per  cent. 

The  public  finances  have  improved  considerably 
during  recent  years,  and  this  betterment  is  to  be 
attributed  to  the  new  revenues  created  by  the  congress 
upon  the  proposal  of  the  executive  power. 

As  has  just  been  said,  the  most  valuable  element 
involved  in  the  new  revenues  was  constituted  by  the 
export  duties  upon  agricultural  and  mining  products, 
a  tax  that  operates  upon  our  principal  extractive 
industries,  but  which,  because  of  the  spirit  of  justice 
and  public  interest  that  has  governed  its  creation, 
does  not  compromise,  fortunately,  the  sources  of 
national  wealth. 

These  export  duties  established  in  conformity  with 
laws  2143,  of  October  4,  1915,  and  2187,  of  November 


26  PERU 

14,  of  the  same  year,  brought  into  the  treasury  the 
following  returns : 

1915 $272,157.82 

1916 2,320,934.45 

1917 2,868,761.90 

1918 4,831,809.56 

The  first  six  months  of  1919 2,413,400.62 

$12,707,064.35 

The  new  taxes  created  in  accordance  with  law  2219 
have  contributed  likewise  to  the  increasing  movement 
of  the  fiscal  revenues,  and  they  produced  in  the  year 
1918: 

Consular  bills  of  lading      $17,190.70 

Ten  per  cent,  upon  articles  previously  free    ....     380,810.03 
Demurrage   in   the   custom-houses   of   Callao   and 

Mollendo 46,104.98 

$444,105.71 

The  new  inheritance  tax,  fixed  by  law  number 
2227,  has  brought  into  the  exchequer  in  the  last  year 
a  revenue  of  $85,083.58,  and  in  the  first  six  months 
of  the  present  year  of  $78,300.72. 

In  accord  with  the  ideas  set  forth  in  my  last  message 
to  the  congress  and  sanctioned  by  law  number  3069, 
there  was  constituted  the  new  Compafifa  Adminis- 
tradora  del  Guano,  with  the  understanding  that  the 
government  should  enjoy  a  stipulated  participation  in 
the  selling  price  of  the  fertilizer  and  that  the  expenses 
of  extraction  and  transportation  should  be  at  the 
expense  of  the  company  itself. 

If  the  legislative  chambers,  wisely  safeguarding  the 
interests  of  the  state  connected  with  the  fostering  of 
this  valuable  source  of  public  wealth,  retain  the  figure 


PERU  27 

of  $1.22,  proposed  by  the  executive  power  as  the  quota 
for  the  unit  of  azote  (nitrogen)  which  the  government 
ought  to  receive,  it  is  evident  that  the  consumption  of 
guano  will  extend  considerably,  with  positive  benefit  to 
the  national  agriculture;  and  at  no  distant  time  the 
exchequer  will  have  from  this  source  a  net  revenue  of 
not  less  than  $1,216,000  annually,  resulting  from  the 
employment  of  a  hundred  thousand  tons  of  fertilizer  in 
agricultural  enterprises. 

The  customs  revenues,  as  likewise  those  adminis- 
tered by  the  fiscalized  companies,5  have  also  increased 
in  a  proportion  worthy  to  be  taken  into  account. 

All  these  factors  indicate  a  notable  progress  in  the 
development  of  the  public  income,  the  exact  figures  of 
which  are  shown  in  the  following  table : 

Income  received  in  1914 $14,733,015.84 

Income  received  in  1915 14,025,813.31 

Income  received  in  1916 I9.i75t755-77 

Income  received  in  1917 21,938,756.96 

Income  received  in  1918 23,796,930.62 

Estimated    income   for    1919,    according   to   the 

budget  voted  by  the  congress 25,142,731.38 

A  fundamental  point  of  my  program  of  government 
was  the  restoration  of  the  credit  of  the  nation,  pro- 
foundly affected  by  the  suspension  which  the  state  was 
compelled  to  make  in  the  payment  of  all  its  obligations 
in  1914  on  account  of  the  grave  crisis  that  occurred  as  a 
result  of  the  declaration  of  war  in  Europe. 

1  Companies  organized  under  supervision  of  the  national  govern- 
ment, and  in  which  a  representative  of  the  government  holds  a  re- 
sponsible position. 


28  PERU 

In  order  to  secure  this  object,  I  had  to  occupy 
myself,  from  the  very  moment  in  which  I  assumed 
charge  of  the  task  of  administration,  with  studying  the 
best  manner  of  putting  the  public  treasury  in  a  sound 
condition,  and  to  this  end  I  was  authorized  by  the 
congress  to  make  a  refunding  loan  in  the  United 
States. 

Circumstances  known  to  all  hindered  the  carrying 
out  of  this  wise  financial  plan,  the  execution  of  which 
would  have  enabled  the  nation  to  save  large  sums  of 
money  in  the  payment  of  interest  upon  debts  that 
to-day  bear  a  higher  rate,  and  to  avail  herself  of  the 
advantages  to  be  derived  from  the  international 
exchange  in  favor  of  our  money,  without  increasing  in 
any  way  the  financial  engagements  of  the  state, 
inasmuch  as  it  was  simply  an  affair  of  refunding  the 
debt. 

The  idea  of  placing  a  loan  abroad  being  abandoned, 
I  resolved  strictly  to  apply  the  balances  of  the  budget 
to  the  amortization  of  our  credit  ofrigations,  a  purpose 
which  was  fully  realized  in  the  transactions  of  1916 
and  1917,  but  which,  unfortunately,  could  not  be 
carried  out  with  the  same  amplitude  last  year,  because 
the  congress  substantially  modified  the  figures  of  the 
budget  bill  for  1918  presented  by  the  executive 
power. 

In  spite  of  this,  the  table  that  appears  below  will 
make  known  to  the  people  of  the  country  the  energetic 
and  constant  enterprise  displayed  by  the  constitu- 
tional government  in  reducing  the  floating  debt  of  the 
state — the  effect  of  the  shortsightedness  and  inhar- 
mony  of  another  hour — and  in  restoring  the  foreign 


PERU 


credit  of  the  nation,  an  advantage  that  is  only  enjoyed 
by  peoples  that  are  able  punctually  to  discharge  their 
financial  obligations. 


PAYMENT  OF  THE  NATIONAL  DEBTS 


AMORTIZATION 


INTERESTS 


TOTAL 


1915 

$330,454-87 

$405,487.36 

$735,937-83 

1916 

1,881,228.85 

1,441,985.59 

3,323,211.28 

1917 

3,635,857-54 

1,434.379-94 

5,067,801.63 

1918 

1,226,259.16 

851,854.47 

2,178,109.98 

1919,  first  six 

670,665.46 

365,888.63 

1,036,552.45 

months 

$7,744,465.88     $4,499,595-99    $12,341,613.17 

As  may  be  seen,  during  the  period  of  my  adminis- 
tration there  has  been  paid  out,  on  account  of  amortiza- 
tion and  interest  upon  our  debts,  the  considerable 
sum  of  $12,261,629.90. 

To  these  figures  that  appear  in  the  foregoing 
table,  as  the  payments  made  during  recent  years,  to 
the  sum  of  $7,744,465.88,  I  am  able  to  add  the  fol- 
lowing amortizations,  which  were  to  be  obtained 
from  transactions  carried  on  with  the  persons  inter- 
ested and  which  were  about  to  be  perfected  when  the 
government  was  overthrown.  With  the  Compania 
Peruana  de  Vapores  I  had  on  foot  agreements  that 
represented  for  the  country  the  following  benefits: 
Cancelation  of  the  responsibility  of  the  government 

for  the  loan  of $1,226,000 

For  the  payment  of 1,459,200 

Besides,  there  were  canceled  also  the  responsibilities 

of  the  state  for  previous  payments  due  and  not 

made  and  which  exceeded  the  sum  of 972,800 

Or  a  reduction  of  the  public  debt  by  the  amount  of  .  $3,658,100 


30  PERU 

The  government  was  to  sell  the  130,000  shares 
which  it  held  in  this  steamship  company  at  $972,800. 

With  the  Compania  del  Ferrocarril  de  Huacho,  by 
virtue  of  the  express  authority  of  the  congress,  I  was 
at  the  point  of  perfecting  an  agreement  by  which  the 
government  would  receive  as  property  the  railway  and 
its  equipment  in  order  to  exploit  it  in  the  way  the 
government  might  deem  proper.  The  present  issue 
would  be  replaced  by  an  issue  of  government  bonds, 
but  limited  to  $3,842,560,  which  represents  the  value 
of  the  work  accomplished.  The  issue  would  yield  the 
same  interest  as  that  which  it  would  bear  to-day,  thus 
producing  a  larger  sum  to  be  devoted  to  amortization. 

The  sums  claimed  for  payments  due  but  not  made 
would  be  canceled  by  the  government  with  $486,400. 

These  were  the  bases  of  the  arrangement  planned, 
which,  as  will  be  observed,  could  not  have  been  more 
favorable  to  the  public  interests,  because  they  cleared 
up  a  situation  that  was  disadvantageous  to  the  credit 
of  the  state,  and  because  the  debt  that  exists  to-day  in 
behalf  of  a  railway  that  is  not  a  property  of  the  state, 
was  to  be  refunded  by  a  smaller  sum,  while  at  the  same 
time  the  government  would  receive  possession  of  the 
line,  that  is,  it  would  increase  by  an  equal  amount  the 
productive  national  property. 

The  government  planned  the  organization  of  a 
company  that  was  to  manage  the  railway,  supply  it 
with  the  necessary  rolling-stock  and  extend  it  to 
Lima,  with  the  assurance  that  the  products  of  the 
line  were  to  supply  the  new  capital  necessary  to  carry 
on  this  work,  and  even  to  cover  the  responsibility  for 
the  payment  of  the  new  bonds  in  a  short  time. 


PERU  31 

Another  of  the  purposes  insistently  pursued  by  the 
recent  government  was  the  refunding  of  the  internal 
debt,  to  which  effect  law  number  2713  was  enacted,  by 
virtue  of  which  the  present  obligations,  which  origi- 
nated with  the  previous  fiscal  administration,  could  be 
canceled  with  warrants  subject  to  sinking-fund  and 
interest  charges. 

The  respective  bonds  being  received  from  the 
United  States,  the  issue  was  begun  with  the  object  of 
paying  the  obligations  investigated  by  the  liquidating 
committee,  organized  for  this  purpose. 

Up  to  July  4,  new  bonds  had  been  issued  to  the 
value  of  $1,606,481.92. 

With  a  view  to  liquidating  the  obligations  of  the 
state  derived  from  the  contract  for  the  cancelation  of 
the  public  debt  of  January  n,  1890,  relative  to  the 
exploitation  of  the  guano  of  our  islands,  I  have  used 
the  greatest  diligence  in  the  settlement  of  the  differ- 
ences pending  with  the  Peruvian  Corporation. 

Duly  assured — in  conformity  with  law  number  2107 
— of  a  preference  for  the  use  of  this  fertilizer  in  the 
national  agriculture,  the  government  proposed  to  the 
Peruvian  Corporation  to  pay  it  in  money  and  by 
annuities  the  value  of  the  number  of  tons  of  guano 
which,  according  to  the  contract  of  1890  already  cited, 
it  still  has  the  right  to  export — when  the  requirements 
of  the  farmers  of  the  country  were  satisfied — until 
the  quantity  of  2,000,000  tons  should  be  reached. 

Progress  was  made  with  the  new  representative  of 
the  Peruvian  Corporation  in  the  solution  proposed,  to 
the  point  that  the  basis  of  indemnity  to  the  corpora- 
tion for  the  remainder  of  the  guano  that  still  belongs 


32  P  E  R  fj 

to  it  was  accepted ;  but  it  was  not  possible  to  reach  an 
understanding  regarding  the  rate  at  which  the  price  of 
the  fertilizer  per  ton  should  be  estimated.  Upon  this 
point  the  government  contended  that  the  price  ought 
to  be  fixed  at  the  average  maintained  by  the  guano 
from  the  time  when  the  first  shipment  was  made  by 
the  Peruvian  Corporation  until  the  enactment  of  the 
decree  of  February,  1909,  which,  by  arbitrarily  estab- 
lishing the  division  of  the  guano  islands  into  zones, 
granted  to  the  Peruvian  Corporation,  without  any 
compensation  to  the  government,  the  richest  fertilizer, 
assuring  it  consequently  the  longest  time  for  exploita- 
t'on;  and  the  representative  of  the  company  held  to 
exactly  the  opposite  opinion,  that  is,  that  the  value  of 
the  guano  ought  to  be  calculated  at  the  mean  price  of 
the  fertilizer,  beginning  with  the  decree  of  1909 
mentioned,  until  the  date  of  the  last  shipment. 

In  view  of  the  absolute  impossibility  of  reaching  a 
direct  understanding  regarding  this  particular,  it  was 
agreed  that  the  difference  question  should  be  sub- 
mitted to  arbitration  for  solution;  and  at  the  very 
moment  when  the  revolutionary  movement  of  July  4 
last  was  in  process  of  consummation,  the  directorate 
of  the  Peruvian  Corporation  was  to  give  its  decision 
regarding  this  proposal,  which  the  government 
promised  also  to  submit  to  the  sanction  of  the  congress. 

The  policy  pursued  by  the  government  in  relation 
to  the  administration  of  the  Compania  Peruana  de 
Vapores  is  known  to  the  public. 

Animated  by  the  serious  purpose  of  conciliating  the 
permanent  and  higher  interests  of  the  company  with 


PERU  33 

those  of  the  stock-holders,  it  was  necessary  to  over- 
come inevitable  obstacles  before  a  good  understanding 
could  be  reached.  Happily,  all  obstacles  being  over- 
come, the  company  has  won  a  truly  favorable  and  solid 
position,  which  permits  it  to  face  the  future  with 
confidence. 

During  recent  times  the  Compania  Peruana  de 
Vapores  has  distributed  important  dividends;  it  has 
canceled  the  loan  of  $1,216,000,  for  which  the  govern- 
ment was  responsible;  it  has  taken  the  place  of  the 
state  in  the  affair  of  the  Paris  loan;  it  has  been  able 
to  accumulate  resources  of  its  own  that  have  put  it  in  a 
position  to  acquire  two  transatlantic  steamers  of  7,000 
tons  each,  of  the  approximate  value  of  $3,404,800. 

The  government  is  the  owner  of  130,000  shares  of 
the  company. 

By  virtue  of  law  2763,  due  to  the  initiative  of  the 
executive  power,  there  has  been  organized  among  us 
the  institution  of  general  warehouses  designed  to  lend 
very  useful  and  effective  service  to  commerce  by 
means  of  the  application  of  credit  to  products  and 
merchandise  in  bond. 

By  means  of  the  summary  enumeration  just  made 
may  be  seen  how,  during  the  four  years  of  my  last 
administration,  the  country  has  grown  notably  in  her 
productive  capacity,  has  capitalized  enormous  sums, 
has  met  all  her  obligations  with  strict  punctuality  and 
has  reduced  her  debt  by  considerable  amounts. 

The  following  have  been  the  honorable  and  patri- 
otic uses  made  of  the  national  revenues:  to  stimulate 
the  development  of  public  wealth ;  to  put  the  national 
exchequer  in  a  sound  condition ;  and  to  foster  power- 


34  PERU 

fully  the  moral  and  material  life  of  the  nation  by  the 
accomplishment  of  enterprises  of  supreme  importance. 

WAR 

A  theme  exploited  by  the  opposition  to  my  govern- 
ment with  a  persistence  comparable  only  to  the  base- 
ness of  the  design  with  which  it  was  inspired  has 
been  the  contention  that  there  existed  on  my  part  no 
interest  in  looking  out  for  the  progress  of  the  army  and 
for  acquiring  the  war  materials  necessary  to  the 
effective  defense  of  the  rights  of  the  nation.  These 
gratuitious  and  sinister  charges,  which  I  had  to  regard 
with  disdain  by  considering  that  no  citizen  of  Peru 
had  a  right  to  overlook  my  patriotic  efforts  in  behalf 
of  the  true  perfecting  of  our  military  institution — in- 
asmuch as  the  reality  proves  that  both  in  my  latter 
and  my  former  administration  I  looked  out  zealously 
for  the  advancement,  the  dignity  and  the  standing  of 
our  army — have  been,  in  spite  of  their  notable  fre- 
quency, publicly  supported  by  the  successful  revolu- 
tion. 

In  truth,  such  accusations  appear  embodied  in  the 
manifesto  which  the  chief  of  the  subversive  movement 
of  Anc6n  in  August  of  the  previous  year  issued  to  the 
public,  and  the  present  usurping  president,  in  recent 
discourses,  in  reply  to  the  head  of  the  general  staff  of 
the  army,  as  he  was  also  of  the  constitutional  govern- 
ment— but  who  had  to  be  removed  from  that  position 
because  his  ability  was  hot  equal  to  the  function  that 
was  intrusted  to  him — has  said  that  he  grieved  from 
afar  over  the  manner  in  which  the  army  was  treated. 


PERU  35 

This  circumstance  compels  me  to  make  known  to 
the  nation,  in  all  its  fullness,  the  governmental  activi- 
ties developed  during  the  last  four  years  in  behalf  of 
the  military  institution. 

Imperative  demands  of  a  financial  character,  which 
it  would  not  be  just  to  forget  at  this  moment,  led  me 
to  reduce  the  effectives  of  the  army  at  the  beginning 
of  my  administration.  Experience  has  demonstrated 
that  there  was  wisdom  in  this  measure  and  in  other 
measures  of  strict  economy  adopted  in  the  different 
branches  of  the  public  service ;  because  without  them 
it  would  not  have  been  possible  to  free  the  country 
from  the  frightful  fiscal  situation  to  which  it  was 
being  forced  by  the  budgets  liquidated  with  a  deficit, 
a  genuine  menace  to  the  future  of  the  nation.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  safety  of  the  state,  in  times  of 
marked  quietude  in  our  international  relations,  was 
perfectly  safeguarded  by  means  of  an  organization  of 
a  temporary  character  planned  for  the  army;  and  the 
military  preparation  of  the  country  did  not  suffer  any 
set-back,  either;  for  the  reduction  of  the  effectives 
was  compensated  for  by  the  rigid  application  given 
to  the  newest  law  upon  the  formation  of  mobilizable 
groups  composed  of  citizens  between  twenty-one  and 
twenty-two  years  of  age,  in  excess  of  the  anuual  con- 
tingents obliged  to  receive  instruction  in  military 
marksmanship. 

It  is  necessary  to  make  it  clear,  however,  for  the 
sake  of  truth,  that  the  reduction  of  the  army  extended 
over  the  time  that  was  strictly  necessary  only.  The 
stringencies  of  the  public  treasury  being  passed,  the 
government  proposed  to  the  congress  in  1917  a 


36  PERU 

considerable  increase  in  the  number  of  effectives,  and 
this  proposal  was  carried  out  in  1918.  In  1919,  the 
number  of  our  troops  was  again  raised,  and  in  the 
budget  proposed  for  the  coming  year  of  1920,  a  third 
increase  of  troops  was  considered. 

Possessed  of  all  these  forces,  it  was  possible  to  create 
such  new  units  as:  infantry  regiment  number  13; 
the  companies  of  divisional  machine-guns;  the 
battalion  of  gendarmes  of  Lima  number  2;  and  the 
squadron  of  horse  of  the  guards  of  Lima. 

In  this  respect,  however,  it  is  possible  for  me  to  go 
even  farther.  I  am  enabled  to  affirm,  in  spite  of  the 
malevolent  criticisms  of  my  adversaries,  that  the 
republic  never  had  in  time  of  peace  a  greater  number 
of  military  effectives  than  it  possessed  during  the 
period  of  the  overthrown  government. 

As  unmerited  as  the  charge  in  connection  with  the 
number  of  men,  is  the  accusation  that  has  been 
brought  against  my  government,  of  not  having 
concerned  itself  with  the  acquisition  of  war  material. 

No  one  can  be  ignorant,  certainly,  that  during  the 
recent  world  conflict  all  the  nations  absolutely  pro- 
hibited trade  in  articles  of  war,  and  if  at  times  they 
seemed  disposed  to  permit  it,  as  an  exception,  it  was 
with  the  exaction  of  such  exorbitant  prices  that  the 
government  which  would  have  acquired  them  in  the 
circumstances  would  have  incurred  a  very  grave 
responsibility.  Nevertheless,  as  soon  as  the  armistice 
brought  hostilities  in  Europe  to  an  end  it  became  my 
duty  to  acquire,  as  far  as  the  resources  of  the  state 
would  permit,  the  most  indispensable  armament. 
Thus  were  bought  munitions  for  the  infantry;  an 


PERU  37 

important  lot  of  machine-guns;  an  equally  valuable 
one  of  aviation  material;  considerable  repairs  upon 
the  cruisers  Grau  and  Bolognesi ;  and  on  the  fourth  of 
July  a  contract  was  about  to  be  concluded  for  the 
acquisition  of  artillery  munitions. 

To  this  end,  I  ought  to  say  also  that,  since  it  was 
impossible  to  acquire  war  materials,  as  is  generally 
believed,  that  is,  in  an  arbitrary  and  haphazard 
manner,  but  by  following  a  harmonious,  progressive 
and  well  considered  plan — the  only  guaranty  that 
there  will  be  no  repetition  of  such  errors  as  the  blunder 
that  was  made  in  acquiring  a  unit  that  was  without 
any  military  value,  like  the  cruiser  Elias  Aguirre — the 
government  had  formulated  two  bills  that  were  to  be 
submitted  to  the  next  congress. 

The  first  of  them  referred  to  the  creation  of  special 
revenues  to  constitute  the  war  fund;  the  second  bill 
provided  for  the  organization  of  a  council  of  national 
defense,  a  body  designed  to  control  all  that  had  to  do 
with  the  armed  defense  of  the  country  and  which,  in 
consequence,  was  to  formulate  the  program  for  the 
acquisition  of  material,  to  authorize  the  contracts 
made  to  this  effect,  superintend  the  application  of  the 
sums  voted,  etc.  The  solicitous  interest  of  the 
constitutional  government  in  behalf  of  military 
instruction  is  revealed  likewise  by  the  contract  for  the 
services  of  the  French  mission ;  by  the  foundation  of  a 
school  of  aviation  in  charge  of  a  competent  and 
expert  personnel  to  direct  it;  by  the  effort  which  it 
always  showed  to  raise  to  the  highest  rank — to  the 
command  of  the  general  staff — from  the  military 
regions  and  the  different  units,  the  leaders  of  greatest 

210714 


38  PERU 

repute  for  their  professional  capacity;  by  the  regu- 
larity with  which  it  carried  out  the  law  of  military 
service;  by  the  organization  of  garrison  maneuvers, 
provided  for  some  years  ago,  and  put  into  effect 
recently  in  the  divisions  of  the  north,  of  the  south  and 
in  Lima,  with  the  calling  out  of  the  reserves;  by  the 
accomplishment  of  scientific  journeys  on  the  part  of 
the  academy  of  war ;  by  the  sending  abroad  of  leaders 
of  distinction  to  visit  large  countries  and  great  armies ; 
by  the  reopening  of  the  school  of  marksmanship;  by 
the  fostering — unfortunately  limited  because  of  the 
scarcity  of  ammunition — of  target  practice  throughout 
the  republic;  and  by  the  construction  of  a  central 
magazine  of  powder. 

In  like  manner,  my  administration  has  given 
attention  to  the  welfare  of  the  officers  and  soldiers  and 
it  has  introduced  improvements  irto  the  hospital  of 
San  Bartolome,  which  put  it  in  a  splendid  condition 
for  the  treatment  of  the  sick;  and  in  its  section  of 
surgery,  in  charge  of  one  of  the  most  reputable 
surgeons  of  the  country,  has  been  installed  all  the 
equipment  required  by  the  demands  of  modern 
science;  a  magnificent  property  located  in  Trujillo 
has  been  converted  into  military  barracks;  the 
buildings  of  the  barracks  of  Sullana,  Juliaca  and  of  the 
Avenida  del  Ej6rcito  in  Lima  are  now  in  course  of 
construction  and  far  advanced;  and  properties 
contiguous  to  the  present  barracks  of  El  Cercado 
have  been  acquired  for  the  formation  of  a  soldiers' 
home. 

It  seems  to  me  sufficient  to  set  forth  the  labors  of  my 
administration  in  respect  of  the  army — a  duty  to 


PERU  39 

which  my  detractors  drive  me — in  order  to  prove  the 
injustice  of  the  attacks  of  which  they  have  made  me 
the  victim. 

Men  of  honor  who  live  outside  the  heated  passions 
of  our  political  strife  and  who,  fortunately,  represent 
the  majority  of  the  country,  are  those  who  are  called 
upon  to  pronounce  a  favorable  verdict  regarding  my 
activities  in  this  particular;  and  those  leaders  and 
officials  of  the  army  and  navy  who  took  part  in  the 
ignominious  campaign  of  the  early  morning  of  July  4 
must  read  these  lines  and  judge  in  the  depths  of  their 
conscience  whether  their  conduct  can  by  any  means  be 
reconciled  with  the  love  which  they  owe  to  their 
calling,  the  noblest  and  most  elevated  in  its  purposes 
and  therefore  the  most  exacting  in  respect  of  the 
principles  of  honor  and  duty. 

The  gendarmerie  and  the  police  of  Lima  have  also 
received  especial  attention  on  my  part.  Consideration 
of  their  needs  has  always  been  as  punctual  as  that  of 
the  army,  and  the  pay  of  those  engaged  in  both 
branches  of  the  service  has  been  increased  on  two 
occasions.  As  to  their  quarters:  no  government  has 
so  much  concerned  itself  as  mine  that  they  should  be 
commodious  and  hygienic.  There  stand  to-day  cer- 
tain other  barracks,  reconstructed  almost  completely 
through  my  exclusive  action,  in  my  latter  and  my  for- 
mer administrations,  to  corroborate  this  point,  as  I 
have  said. 

In  other  respects,  all  may  recall  the  bill  of  the 
executive  power,  pending  before  the  chambers  and 
designed  to  remedy  the  precarious  condition  of  the 
leaders  and  officers  of  the  gendarmes  by  guaranteeing 


4O  PERU 

to  them  the  rights  of  elevation  and  the  privilege  of 
retirement  with  pension. 

The  personnel  of  .the  police  also  received  from  the 
government  true  incentives,  which  consisted  in  supply- 
ing the  official  vacancies  by  competitive  examination 
and  in  the  increase  of  their  salaries. 

INSTRUCTION 

Developing  my  program  for  the  stimulus  of  the 
moral  and  material  interests  of  the  country,  I  have 
had  a  lively  concern,  as  I  had  in  my  former  adminis- 
tration, for  the  progress  of  national  education  and  for 
the  construction  of  railways  and  other  public  works  of 
importance,  with  no  other  restrictions  than  those 
imposed  by  the  economic  ability  of  the  state. 

One  of  the  first  undertakings  that  I  submitted  to 
the  congress  was  the  annulment  of  law  number  2094  in 
order  to  restore  to  the  central  government,  in  all  its 
integrity,  the  authority  reposed  in  it  by  law  number 
162,  and  thus  to  assure,  by  means  of  the  action  of 
superintendents  of  education,  the  greatest  efficiency 
in  respect  of  primary  instruction. 

The  failure  to  secure  hitherto  so  necessary  an  object 
did  not  prevent,  however,  the  Direccion  General  de 
Instruction  from  stimulating,  by  all  the  means  at  its 
command,  the  development  of  popular  education. 

The  following  figures  clearly  reveal  the  work  of  the 
government  in  this  important  branch  of  public  admin- 
istration. 

The  number  of  schools  that  existed  in  1915  was  2276. 

The  number  of  teachers  upon  the  rolls  in  1915  was 
3246. 


PERU  41 

The  number  of  pupils  matriculated  in   1915  was 
165,724. 
Well  then : 

The  number  of  schools  in  1919  was  2980. 
The  number  of  teachers  in  1919  was  4284. 
The  number  of  pupils  enrolled  in  1919  was  175,320. 

As  to  the  sums  devoted  to  the  promotion  of  primary 
instruction,  I  ought  to  explain  that  while  the  budget 
of  1915  voted  the  sum  of  $1,109,753.05,  the  budget  for 
1919  includes  the  sum  of  $1,715,738.68;  and  in  the  bill 
for  1920,  the  sum  of  $1,945,600  was  under  considera- 
tion. 

These  figures  indicate  that  during  the  last  four  years, 
404  schools  have  been  established,  and  the  item  for 
primary  instruction  has  been  almost  doubled. 

The  schools  have  been  supplied  with  the  necessary 
equipment,  and  the  Sociedad  Geografica  has  prepared, 
at  the  request  of  the  government,  a  map  of  Peru, 
appropriate  for  instruction  in  national  geography. 

The  condition  of  the  teachers  has  also  been  contem- 
plated with  solicitous  interest,  and  their  salaries  have 
been  raised  in  the  proportion  permitted  by  the  re- 
sources of  the  state. 

The  construction  of  school  buildings  has  not  been 
accomplished  with  the  amplitude  achieved  during  my 
former  administration.  Nevertheless,  a  school  center 
that  combines  all  the  conditions  required  by  pedagogy 
and  hygiene  has  been  constructed  in  Lima,  and  a 
number  of  schools  have  been  repaired. 

I  had  thought  that  a  better  organization  of  the  land 
tax  would  considerably  increase  the  departmental 


42  PERU 

revenues,  thus  placing  the  offices  that  administered 
them  in  a  position  to  contribute  effectively  to  the 
development  of  the  different  regions  of  the  territory, 
and  enabling  the  state,  to  which  belong  thirty  per 
cent,  of  these  revenues,  to  devote  a  greater  part  of 
what  was  obtained  to  the  construction  of  local  school 
centers.  To  this  end  the  respective  bill  was  oppor- 
tunely submitted  to  the  chambers,  and  it  still  awaits 
the  sanction  of  the  congress. 

As  to  secondary  instruction,  the  government,  appre- 
ciating the  importance  that  the  formation  of  orderly 
and  industrious  habits  in  the  mind  of  the  young  has 
upon  the  future  of  the  country,  has  devoted  itself 
scrupulously  to  the  maintenance  of  discipline  in  edu- 
cational institutions. 

The  enrolment  that  reached  4,918  pupils  in  1915  has 
increased  to  6,486  in  the  present  year. 

The  incomes  of  the  colleges  have  been  considerably 
augmented. 

In  1915,  they  reached  a  total  of  $353.364-73:  in 
1919,  that  of  $482,436.36. 

Some  new  establishments  for  education  have  been 
founded :  the  Colegio  Pardo,  in  Chincha ;  a  school  for 
girls,  in  Chiclayo;  a  manual  training  school,  in  the 
same  city;  and  another  similar  school,  in  Iquitos. 

Upon  the  initiative  of  the  government  and  of  law 
2510,  the  duration  of  secondary  instruction  has  been 
extended  to  five  years,  and  this  extension  permits,  by 
means  of  the  greater  distribution  of  the  courses,  a 
greater  thoroughness  in  the  study  of  the  history  and 
geography  of  Peru,  in  conformity  with  ideas  that  it 
fell  to  my  lot  to  present  to  those  in  charge  of  the 


PERU  43 

department  while  I  was  president  of  the  Universidad 
de  San  Marcos. 

To  a  better  teaching  of  these  courses  of  a  national 
character  is  to  be  attributed  also  the  formation  of  the 
geographical  atlas  of  Peru,  intrusted  by  the  govern- 
ment to  the  Sociedad  Geografica,  and  which  was  an 
undertaking  carried  out  for  the  first  time  among  us. 

The  normal  schools  for  men  and  for  women  have 
furnished  a  considerable  number  of  teachers,  who  at 
present  are  exercising  their  teaching  function  in  the 
service  of  the  people. 

The  foundation  of  the  Escuela  Nacional  de  Bellas 
Artes,  established  in  adequate  quarters  of  its  own, 
and  the  organization  of  the  Archive  Nacional,  accom- 
plished also  in  this  period,  crown  the  work  of  higher 
culture  which  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  inaugurate  in 
my  former  administration,  with  the  creation  of  the 
Museo  .Nacional,  the  Academia  Nacional  de  Musica 
and  the  Institute  Hist6rico. 

JUSTICE 

During  the  last  four  years,  there  has  been  a  con- 
siderable advance  in  the  betterment  of  our  present 
system,  through  the  construction  of  new  penal 
institutions. 

The  government  being  authorized  by  law  number 
2404  to  utilize  convict  labor  outside  the  prisons 
proceeded  to  establish  the  penal  colony  of  Front6n, 
which  has  the  capacity  to  lodge  two  hundred  convicts, 
who  are  engaged  in  cutting  blocks  for  the  paving  of 
Callao. 


44  PERU 

The  establishment  constructed  has  the  use  of 
buildings  appropriate  to  its  character,  with  equip- 
ment of  electric  light,  wireless  telegraphy,  a  dock,  a 
tug,  and  tank  and  freight  launches. 

The  sum  expended  on  the  construction  of  this 
colony  exceeds  $48,640. 

An  aspect  of  criminality  that  always  demanded  the 
special  attention  of  the  government,  because  of  the 
serious  possibilities  it  involved  for  the  future  of  society, 
was  that  which  related  to  juvenile  offenses.  For  the 
purpose  of  correcting  it  in  the  effective  manner  coun- 
seled by  modern  penal  science,  there  has  been  erected  a 
magnificent  establishment  with  the  farm  of  El 
Cercado  as  a  base  and  the  expropriation  of  the  scrip- 
tory  rights  of  Orduna  and  Munay,  where  youthful  in- 
mates may  devote  themselves,  in  an  environment  rela- 
tively pure,  from  the  twofold  physical  and  normal 
point  of  view,  to  the  education  of  their  sentiments  and 
the  development  of  their  energies  applied  to  the  culti- 
vation of  the  soil. 

The  construction  of  the  principal  edifice  of  this 
important  enterprise  is  already  completed,  and  the 
work  of  constructing  the  pavilions  designed  for  the 
auxiliary  services  of  laundry,  bakery,  blacksmith- 
shop,  stables,  etc.,  is  in  progress.  This  new  plant  is 
supplied  with  its  own  equipment  of  electric  light,  wa- 
ter, drainage,  etc. 

Up  to  July  4,  there  had  been  spent  upon  the  works 
of  the  correctional  school  $178,  478.49. 

In  the  Pan6ptico,  there  has  recently  been  constructed 
a  third  story,  with  104  cells,  in  which  are  now  lodged 


PERU  45 

an  equal  number  of  convicts,  who  likewise  had  served 
their  sentence  in  the  public  prison. 

This  establishment  has  called  for  an  expenditure  of 


The  work  upon  the  prison  of  Lima,  begun  during  my 
first  administration,  has  also  been  resumed,  the  direc- 
tion of  it  being  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  special  commis- 
sion. It  was  the  purpose  of  the  government  to  furnish 
the  necessary  means  to  enable  this  establishment,  by 
the  end  of  the  year,  to  be  in  a  position  to  lodge,  with 
due  security,  a  hundred  prisoners,  who  would  then  be 
able  to  continue  the  work  upon  the  edifice  on  eco- 
nomical terms  to  the  state. 

Such  is,  in  outline,  the  contribution  made  by  the 
government  over  which  I  presided  to  the  work  of  social 
defense. 

FOMENTO 

The  action  of  the  administration  during  the  years  of 
1916  and  1917  being  concentrated  upon  the  reorgani- 
zation of  the  public  treasury,  nothing  important  could 
be  done  then  with  regard  to  the  construction  of  ways  of 
communication.  As  soon,  however,  as  the  state  of  the 
fiscal  revenues  wou'd  permit,  it  was  my  pleasure  to 
continue  the  work  of  national  highways  begun  in  my 
former  administration,  with  the  construction  of  the 
railways  from  Oroya  to  Huancayo,  Sicuani  to  Cuzco, 
Yonan  to  Chilete,  Ilo  to  Moquegua,  Puerto  Pizarro  to 
Tumbes,  and  the  beginning  of  the  first  section  of 
the  railway  from  Huancayo  to  Ayacucho,  all  of  them 
being  enterprises  that  were  paralyzed  from  the  time 
when  I  left  office  in  1908. 


46  PERU 

The  congress,  in  close  harmony  with  the  govern- 
ment in  the  endeavor  to  stimulate  the  material  develop- 
ment of  the  country,  enacted,  under  date  of  November 
3,  1916,  law  number  2323,  upon  highways,  and  on 
.  March  13,  1918,  law  number  2769,  upon  the  construc- 
tion of  railways. 

As  the  executive  power  deemed  the  expendi- 
ture of  the  limited  funds  in  hand  upon  the  simultane- 
ous construction  of  different  lines  to  be  a  very  serious 
obstacle  to  the  efficiency  of  the  policy  that  the  con- 
gress and  the  government  prepared  to  develop  in 
respect  of  the  construction  of  railways,  and  as  the 
law  enacted,  suffered  from  a  certain  confusion  and 
from  vagueness  as  to  the  revenues  which  it  assigned 
for  this  purpose,  I  necessarily  observed  the  fact — a 
circumstance  that  had  the  effect  of  recalling  the  pro- 
visions contained  in  the  law  of  March  31,  1904,  which 
applies  to  the  construction  of  railways  the  net  product 
of  the  tobacco  revenue  and  which  caused  the  promul- 
gation of  law  number  2886,  designed  to  assure  the  fact 
of  its  application  to  a  work  of  so  much  importance  for 
the  republic. 

The  manifest  importance  of  this  law,  the  rigid  terms 
of  which  faithfully  correspond  to  the  most  pressing 
public  desire,  impels  me  to  reproduce  its  text  below: 

The  president  of  the  republic.  Inasmuch  as  the  congress  has 
enacted  the  following  law: 

Article  I.  In  the  execution  of  the  railway  works  ordered  to  be 
studied  and  constructed,  according  to  the  existing  laws,  there  is 
to  be  utilized  the  net  product  of  the  tobacco  monopoly,  after 
deducting: 

First,  the  expense  of  manufacture  and  distribution;  second, 
the  interest  and  amortization  of  the  capital,  which  the  company 


PERU  47 

that  administers  it  has  invested  in  order  to  contract  with  the 
state  for  such  administration,  and  to  take  it  over  from  the 
Compania  Recaudadora  de  Impuestos;  and,  third,  the  interest 
and  the  amortization  of  the  bonds  that  may  be  issued  according 
to  the  following  article: 

Article  II.  The  executive  power  will  authorize  the  company 
that  is  formed  for  the  administration  of  the  tobacco  monopoly 
to  issue  bonds  with  the  guaranty  of  the  latter,  which  shall  be 
called  "bonds  of  the  tobacco  revenue,"  which  shall  pay  up  to 
seven  per  cent,  per  annum,  and  one  per  cent,  for  amortization, 
and  which  shall  be  exempt  from  all  taxes  upon  income  created 
or  to  be  created. 

Article  III.  The  product  of  the  revenue  derived  from  such 
bonds  will  be  applied,  in  the  first  place,  to  the  payment  of  the 
capital  mentioned  in  the  first  section  of  article  I  of  this  law,  and, 
then,  to  the  construction  of  railway  works. 

Article  IV.  Beginning  with  the  first  fortnight  of  the  month 
of  January,  1919,  and  in  the  successive  years,  and  until  the  con- 
struction of  the  railways  shall  be  concluded,  and  all  the  obliga- 
tions and  guaranties  which  the  state  shall  contract  in  constructing 
them  shall  be  canceled,  with  the  mortgage  of  the  tobacco  revenue, 
the  company  that  administers  shall  deposit  in  the  Caja  de 
Depositos  y  Consignaciones,  the  fifteenth  and  the  last  day  of 
each  month,  the  net  product  of  the  monopoly,  which  shall  belong 
to  the  state;  after  making  the  deductions  mentioned  in  article  I, 
as  also  the  amount  of  the  sale  of  bonds  that  may  have  been  issued 
for  the  construction  of  railways,  in  compliance  with  articles  II 
and  III.  The  Caja  de  Depositos  y  Consignaciones  will,  on  its 
part,  withdraw,  every  fortnight,  upon  its  own  responsibility,  the 
percentage  of  the  net  product  which  shall  be  determined  by  laws 
number  1969,  1982  and  2111,  for  the  amortization  of  the  loan 
made  by  the  banks  to  the  government.  This  amount  being 
deducted,  the  Caja  de  Depositos  y  Consignaciones  will  not  make 
any  payment  whatsoever  to  be  charged  against  these  funds,  ex- 
cept for  works,  materials,  salaries,  wages,  expropriations  and  in- 
demnities for  the  construction  of  railways,  and  upon  orders  for 
payment  which  may  be  drawn  for  this  purpose  by  the  Direccion 


48  PERU 

del  Tesoro  ought  to  appear  the  name  of  the  railway  to  which 
they  are  to  be  applied,  as  well  as  the  indicated  details. 

Article  V.  The  sum  set  apart  by  this  law  for  the  construction 
of  railways  may  not  be  devoted  to  any  other  object  different 
from  the  one  established  in  it.  The  assignment  of  sums  set  apart 
for  this  object  in  the  general  budget  of  the  republic  shall  be  kept 
inviolate,  and  they  may  not  be  applied  to  any  other  item  under 
the  responsibility  of  the  minister  who  may  authorize  it  or  of  the 
functionaries  of  the  branch  that  participates  in  the  operation; 
this  being  a  responsibility  that  will  become  effective  according 
to  the  constitution  and  the  laws. 

The  responsibility  treated  of  in  this  article  shall  become 
effective  by  popular  action  before  the  supreme  court,  which  will 
apply  to  violations  of  the  law  the  punishments  corresponding  to 
the  crime  of  malversation  of  public  funds. 

Article  VI.  The  executive  power  shall  be  authorized  to  take 
all  the  necessary  measures  for  the  formation  of  the  company  that 
shall  be  charged  with  the  administration  of  the  tobacco  monopoly, 
in  conformity  with  the  provisions  of  the  law. 

Let  it  be  communicated  to  the  executive  power  in  order  that 
he  may  take  the  necessary  steps  for  its  accomplishment. 

Given  in  the  hall  of  sessions  of  the  congress  in  Lima,  this 
twenty-third  day  of  the  month  of  November,  1918. 

ANTONIO  MiR6  QUESADA,    JUAN  PARDO, 
President  of  the  senate.  President  of  the  chamber  of  deputies. 

F.  R.  LANATTA,  Luis  A.  CARRILLO, 

Secretary  of  the  senate.  Secretary  of  the  chamber  of  deputies. 


To  the  senor  president  of  the  republic: 

Therefore:  I  order  printed,  published  and  circulated  and  that 
it  be  given  due  compliance. 

Issued  at  the  government  house,  this  twenty-ninth  day  of  the 
month  of  November,  1918. 

Jos£  PARDO.  VfcxoR  M.  MAURTUA. 


PERU  49 

The  government  has  definitely  fulfilled  the  above 
mentioned  requirements,  separating  month  by  month 
the  product  of  the  tobacco  revenue  and  delivering  the 
amount  of  it  to  the  Caja  de  Depositos  y  Consigna- 
ciones,  for  exclusive  application  to  the  work  upon 
railways.  It  has  caused  to  be  published  monthly  and 
with  all  scrupulosity  a  statement  of  the  sums  expended 
for  this  purpose. 

Beginning  with  the  first  of  January  of  the  current 
year  and  up  to  June  30,  there  had  been  placed  in  the 
Caja  de  Dep6sitos  y  Consignaciones  the  sum  of 
$612,274.37,  there  remaining  to  be  delivered  on  July  4 
a  balance  for  the  liquidation  of  the  quota  of  the  second 
three  months  that  was  to  have  been  effected  by  the 
Compania  Recaudadora  de  Impuestos.  Since,  accord- 
ing to  the  balance  of  this  company  that  corresponded 
to  the  sum  of  the  second  three  months  of  the  present 
year,  the  greatest  product  of  the  tobacco  monopoly 
exceeded  $291,771.23,  when  the  deduction  was  made 
and  the  commission  for  collection  had  been  calculated, 
as  also  the  interests  which,  according  to  the  instruc- 
tions of  the  government,  were  to  be  reserved  at  the 
rate  of  seven  per  cent,  upon  the  sum  of  $3,891,200.00 — 
the  probable  capital  of  the  new  Compania  Adminis- 
tradora  to  be  established,  etc. — it  may  be  affirmed, 
without  fear  of  falling  into  error,  that  the  sum  of  this 
balance  could  not  have  been  in  any  case  less  than  the 
amount  of  $145,920.00.  It  is  to  be  hoped,  conse- 
quently, that  at  this  date  that  balance  of  $145,920.00 
is  now  reposing  in  the  Caja  de  Depositos  y  Con- 
signaciones. 


50  PERU 

It  is  to  be  trusted  that  the  dictatorship  will  respect 
the  decision  of  the  congress  contained  in  law  2886, 
from  the  compliance  with  which  much  is  expected  by 
the  people  of  the  republic,  taught  by  sad  experience 
of  what  has  occurred  since  my  first  administration, 
terminated  in  September,  1908.  If  the  farsightedness 
of  the  legislators  had  been  manifested  in  the  same  way 
as  is  revealed  by  this  most  recent  law  so  often  cited, 
there  would  have  been  invested  in  the  construction  of 
railway  communications,  from  January  I,  1909,  until 
December  31,  1918,  the  considerable  sum  of 
$15,017,777.77,  and  it  would  not  have  been  necessary 
to  await  my  return  to  power  in  order  to  see  again  the 
realization  of  their  desires  in  respect  of  the  construc- 
tion of  railways. 

Indeed,  responding,  I  repeat,  to  the  unanimous 
demand  of  public  opinion,  which  is  perfectly  aware  of 
the  enormous  influence  that  railways  have  in  the 
solution  of  our  great  national  problems  of  a  political, 
economic  and  military  character,  my  government 
devoted  the  greatest  possible  effort  to  their  con- 
struction. 

The  work  upon  the  line  from  Huancayo  to  Ayacucho 
which,  as  I  have  said  before,  was  suspended  suddenly 
at  kilometer  number  12  in  the  year  1909,  has  been 
renewed,  and  at  present  some  six  hundred  hands  are  at 
work  between  La  Mejorada  and  Huancayo.  Eleven 
hundred  tons  of  rails,  25,000  cross-ties  and  a  locomotive 
and  cars  for  the  moving  of  materials  have  been 
acquired  for  this  work.  If  construction  is  not  again 
interrupted,  the  line  can  be  carried  to  La  Mejorada  by 
July  28  of  the  next  year  of  1920.  The  expenditures 


PERU  51 

that  had  been  made  up  to  June  15  last  exceeded  the 
sum  of  $206,956.58. 

The  prolongation  of  the  railway  from  Chimbote  to 
Recuay  has  been  begun  with  great  enthusiasm.  The 
extension  from  kilometer  104  to  Recuay  is  162 
kilometers  long,  so  that  from  this  important  mining 
and  agricultural  center  to  the  port  of  Chimbote  there 
will  be  a  distance  of  only  266  kilometers.  When  the 
line  reaches  Recuay,  approaching  the  coast  at  the  rich 
and  beautiful  Callej6n  de  Huaylas,  the  country  will 
have  solved  in  an  unimprovable  manner  the  problem 
of  her  supply  of  domestic  wheat. 

The  extension  from  kilometer  104  to  Chorro  and  to 
the  unavoidable  pass  of  the  Canon  del  Pato — which  is 
the  part  of  the  enterprise  that  involves  the  greatest 
difficulties  in  its  construction — is  30  kilometers  long, 
which  being  finished,  the  railway  will  enter  the  valley 
along  an  exceptionally  easy  route. 

Upon  the  initiative  of  the  engineer,  sefior  Hector 
Escard6,  minister  of  the  departments  of  Fomento  and 
Hacienda  during  the  last  administration,  the  congress 
authorized  the  construction  of  the  railway  from 
Chuquicara  to  Cajabamba,  designed  to  benefit 
considerably  the  provinces  of  Pallasca,  Santiago  de 
Chuco,  Pataz,  Otuzco,  Huamachuco  and  Cajabamba, 
whose  abundant  mineral  and  agricultural  riches  will  in 
a  short  time  offer  a  great  stimulus  to  its  development. 
The  contract  has  already  been  made  for  the  construc- 
tion of  the  first  section  of  this  branch  of  18  kilograms, 
which,  because  it  terminates  in  the  carboniferous 
basin  of  Ancos,  gives  ground  for  the  assurance  of  the 
early  exploitation  of  the  minerals  which  it  possesses. 


52  PERU 

For  the  line  of  Chimbote,  24  kilometers  of  rails  and 
40,000  cross-ties  have  been  secured,  a  total  expenditure 
of  $477,475-35  having  been  made  on  account  of  it  up  to 
June  15  last. 

The  railway  from  Cuzco  to  Santa  Ana  continues  to 
be  constructed  with  all  activity,  from  a  desire  soon 
to  extend  the  line  as  far  as  Pachar,  on  the  Urubamba 
river,  a  distance  of  62  kilometers. 

For  this  line,  whose  total  length  is  170  kilometers, 
1,050  tons  of  rails  and  40,000  cross-ties  have  been 
acquired.  The  expenditure  upon  it  made  from 
August  15,  1915,  until  June  15  of  the  present  year, 
exceeded  the  sum  of  $458,089.93. 

The  railway  of  Lurin,  to  the  construction  of  which 
my  government  contributed  with  great  interest,  has 
been  completed,  with  a  total  length  of  45  kilometers. 

The  last  administration  has  applied  to  this  under- 
taking the  sum  of  $451,966.67. 

The  railway  from  Vitor  to  Sotillo,  an  extent  of 
12  kilometers,  was  acquired  by  the  government  at 
public  auction,  and  there  had  been  spent  upon  this 
public  work,  up  to  June  15,  the  sum  of  $61,634.24.  The 
extension  of  the  line  to  the  river  Vitor  has  been 
intrusted  to  the  Peruvian  Corporation. 

The  construction  of  the  railway  from  Ninacaca  to 
Pachitea,  an  undertaking  of  extraordinary  importance, 
which  will  permit  the  exploitation  of  the  immense 
wealth  stored  up  in  our  mountain  regions,  is  being 
pushed  with  the  greatest  effort,  and  the  state  had 
invested  in  it,  up  to  June  15  last,  the  sum  of  $37,905.06. 

In  compliance  with  law  2323  the  following  highways 
are  being  constructed  at  the  present  time: 


PERU  53 

From  Magdalena  to  Cajamarca,  a  distance  of  60.25 
kilometers,  of  which  23  kilometers  have  been  com- 
pleted, with  an  expenditure  of  $80,116.16. 

From  Tarma  to  La  Oroya,  a  distance  of  45.762 
kilometers,  of  which  36.762  have  been  finished,  with 
an  outlay  of  $63,30.38. 

From  La  Mejorada  to  Huancavelica,  a  distance  of 
61.572  kilometers,  of  which  8  have  already  been  com- 
pleted, at  an  expenditure  of  $8,747.06.  There  has 
also  been  constructed  along  with  this  work  a  servicea- 
ble pathway  of  45.927  kilometers,  at  a  cost  of 


From  Gerro  to  Huanuco,  a  distance  of  99.300  kilo- 
meters, of  which  4.447  have  been  completed,  at  an 
outlay  of  $16,100.28. 

From  Abancay  to  Izcuchaca,  a  station  on  the  rail- 
way from  Cuzco  to  Santa  Ana,  a  distance  of  203  kilo- 
meters, of  which  the  commission  charged  with  carry- 
ing out  this  important  work  has  constructed  60  kilo- 
meters, at  an  expense  of  $270,915.07. 

By  a  vote  of  June  27  just  past,  it  was  decided  that 
the  branch  from  Izcuchaca,  on  the  railway  to  Santa 
Ana,  should  be  extended  28  kilometers  to  Abra  de 
Huilque,  thus  considerably  shortening  the  distance  of 
the  highway  between  Abancay  and  Cuzco.  The  en- 
tirely level  territory  permits  the  construction  of  this 
branch  at  a  very  low  cost. 

Apart  from  all  these  public  works,  intimately  associ- 
ated with  the  future  of  the  nation,  the  government 
has  also  undertaken  building  enterprises  of  another 
character  and  of  less  importance,  but  urgently  needed 
for  the  dignity  and  reputation  of  the  higher  authori- 


54  PERU 

ties  of  the  state,  for  the  hygiene,  adornment  and  cul- 
ture of  the  capital,  for  the  progress  of  her  baths  and 
for  the  development  of  the  port  of  Callao,  the  first 
of  the  republic. 

I  limit  myself  to  making  up  a  list  of  the  principal 
of  them: 

The  completion  of  the  building  of  the  Palacio  Legislative. 

The  building  for  the  Ministerio  de  Gobierno,  the  prefecture  and 
police  offices. 

The  archbishop's  palace. 

The  expropriation  of  the  grounds  for  the  new  Palacio  de  Jus- 
ticia. 

The  prolongation  of  the  Avenida  Pierola. 

The  Parque  Universitario. 

The  Escuela  Normal  de  Varones. 

The  Avenida  del  Ejercito. 

The  Avenida  Pardo. 

The  Avenida  Miramar. 

The  Avenida  Bellavista. 

The  Malecon  and  Terrazas  de  la  Magdalena. 

The  Avenida  Santa  Beatrix. 

The  Malecon  de  la  Reserva. 

The  Parque  de  Miraflores. 

The  Plaza  Olaya  in  Chorrillos. 

The  completion  of  the  road  to  Herradura. 

The  Malecon  de  la  Punta. 

Economic  aid  to  the  municipal  councils  of  Chorrillos,  Barranco 
and  Miraflores  for  the  completion  of  works  of  local  impor- 
tance. 

The  construction  of  new  offices  for  the  coast  guard,  the  recon- 
struction of  the  Muelle  de  Fleteros  and  the  beginning  of  the 
first  section  of  the  paving  of  Callao. 

In  the  department  for  the  safeguarding  of  navigation,  a  con- 
tract has  been  made  for  the  construction  of  a  lighthouse  for 
Punta  de  Coles;  the  material  for  the  channel  light  of  La 
Punta;  and  the  luminous  buoys  of  Camotal. 


PERU 55 

It  has  been  the  constant  desire  of  the  government 
to  foster  the  cultivation  of  wheat  and  the  exploitation 
of  our  carboniferous  ledges. 

Those  in  charge  of  the  department  have  distributed 
plows  and  seed  among  the  farmers  who  have  asked 
for  them,  trying  to  place  them  in  circumstances  that 
would  supply  the  towns  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
productive  valleys.  As  has  just  been  said,  a  supply 
of  domestic  wheat  along  the  entire  coast  of  Peru  can 
easily  be  obtained  as  soon  as  the  railway  from  Chim- 
bote  to  Recuay,  now  in  process  of  construction,  shall 
reach  the  Cellejon  de  Huaylas. 

With  a  view  to  facilitating  the  exploitation  of  the 
principal  coal  deposits  of  the  country,  official  action 
has  been  applied  in  an  equally  advantageous  manner. 

In  the  first  place,  law  number  2966  was  enacted. 
This  authorizes  the  construction,  with  state  funds,  of 
the  railway  to  Jatunhuasi,  an  enterprise  which  the 
government  has  not  carried  to  a  conclusion  because  it 
possessed  information  that  justified  it  in  believing  that 
this  line  was  going  to  be  constructed  with  private 
funds  and  in  behalf  of  certain  mining  interests. 

A  contract  has  also  been  made  with  a  syndicate  of 
Huayday  for  the  construction  of  the  roadway  that  will 
unite  this  center  with  the  railway  of  Malabrigo. 

Finally,  with  the  extension  of  the  branch  from 
Chuquicara  to  Cajabamba,  to  which  I  have  already 
referred,  the  rich  basin  of  Ancos  will  be  opened  up  for 
exploitation. 

The  degree  of  prosperity  attained  by  the  agricultural 
and  mining  industries,  which  constitute  the  prime 
source  of  national  labor  and  wealth,  may  be  seen  by 


56  PERU 

reference  to  the  following  details,  which  show  the 
volume  of  production  in  the  years  of  1915  and  1918: 

AGRICULTURAL  PRODUCTS 

1915  1918 

Tons  Tons 

Sugar 257,677  295,000 

Cotton 24,603 

Rice 35,5OO  38,000 

Rubber 2,310 

MINERAL  PRODUCTION 

1915  1918 

Gold kilograms         1,690  1,793 

Silver kilograms     294,425  304,253 

Copper tons      34,727  44.4H 

Lead tons        2,696  632 

Zinc tons  19 

Coal tons    290,000  346,226 

Petroleum tons    343,838  335.OO2 

Borates tons           510  523 

Salt      tons      25,729  26,663 

Mineral  waters      liters  128,333 

The  total  value  of  mineral  products  was: 

In  1915 $28,842,766.08 

In  1918 40,472,605.44 

The  number  of  mineral  properties  leased  in  1915 
was  68,382;  this  figure  rose  to  71,193  during  the  first 
six  months  of  1919. 

The  creation  of  departments  of  agriculture,  water 
and  statistics,  as  well  as  the  enactment  of  the  law 
upon  agrarian  mortgages,  and  the  initiative  of  the 
government  in  the  promotion  of  the-  system  of  rural 
banks,  are  thorough  manifestations  of  the  interest 
I  have  taken  in  the  development  of  the  public  wealth. 


PERU  57 

The  postal  and  telegraph  services  have  also  under- 
gone notable  development  during  the  last  four  years: 

The  income  of  the  post  office  department  during  the 

the  first  six  months  of  the  year  1915  reached  .  .  $255,884.08 
It  reached  during  the  first  six  months  of  the  present 

year    •  434,933-85 

The  returns  of  the  department  of  telegraphs  have 

also  increased  in  an  equal  proportion. 
A  hundred  and  eighty-eight  new  post  offices  and 
thirty-eight  telegraph  stations  have  been  estab- 
lished, and  the  telegraph  system,  which  had  in 

1915  an  extent  of kilometers       12,635,050 

Reached,  on  June  30  last kilometers       14,087,200 

A  contract  has  been  made  for  the  installation  of  a 
direct  telephone  service  in  Lima  and  of  long  distance 
service  in  the  region  from  Chiclayo  to  lea. 

Finally,  many  modern  telegraphic  apparatus  have 
been  acquired,  and  they  will  serve  to  meet  the  defi- 
ciencies that  are  to  be  observed  in  this  service  because 
of  the  considerable  increase  in  messages. 

The  radiographic  service  has  been  much  extended 
during  recent  years,  thanks  to  the  installation  of  the 
new  stations  of  Cachendo — which  has  the  same  power 
as  that  of  San  Cristobal — Salaverry  and  Eten.  The 
erection  of  the  new  tower  at  Piura  was  decreed,  and 
in  a  short  time  it  ought  to  be  placed  in  position,  this 
kind  of  service  being  thus  completed  along  the  whole 
extent  of  our  coast.  The  outlay  incurred  in  the  new 
installations  exceeds  the  sum  of  $91,443.20. 

PUBLIC  HEALTH 

The  activity  of  the  administration  for  the  protection 
of  public  health  has  been  incessant.  It  has  centered 


58  PERU 

its  attention  upon  the  struggle  against  the  bubonic 
plague  and  smallpox,  diseases  that  periodically  deci- 
mate our  population. 

During  the  last  four  years,  vaccination  has  been 
practiced  throughout  the  whole  country. 

Thanks  to  the  zeal  and  competence  of  the  national 
medical  body,  bubonic  plague  serum  is  now  manu- 
factured among  us. 

In  order  to  fight  malaria,  the  services  of  an  Ameri- 
can professional  specialist  have  been  engaged. 

Likewise  a  contract  has  been  made  with  a  noted 
bacteriologist  who  served  in  the  army  of  the  United 
States,  and  who  will  be  in  charge  of  the  organization 
of  the  new  Institute  Bacteriol6gico  which  is  to  be 
constructed  upon  land  along  the  Avenida  Grau  that 
was  formerly  intended  for  a  military  hospital. 

The  construction  of  the  sanitary  station  on  the 
island  of  San  Lorenzo  is  almost  completed. 

For  the  protection  of  friendless  children,  there  have 
been  founded  in  the  capital  two  dispensaries,  which 
bear  the  name  of  "Gota  de  Leche,"  6  and  there  has 
been  established  in  the  Higiocomio  of  Chosica,  a  sani- 
torium  to  serve  as  a  temporary  housing  for  the  frail 
children  of  the  public  schools  who  need  the  benefit  of 
a  change  of  climate  to  build  up  their  organisms.  As 
was  to  be  expected,  these  new  enterprises  have  pro- 
duced excellent  results. 

*  "Drop  of  milk,"  a  name  given  in  Peru  and  Chile  to  certain  estab- 
lishments— usually  the  result  of  private  beneficence — where  milk  is 
dispensed  to  infants  whose  mothers  are  too  poor  to  buy  it,  and  where 
children  are  washed,  treated  and  cared  for,  and  mothers  are  given 
instruction  in  the  rearing  and  nourishment  of  children. 


PERU  59 

With  a  view  to  meeting  properly  the  manifold  de- 
mands of  the  insalubrity  of  the  country,  the  executive 
power  opportunely  submitted  to  the  chambers  two 
important  bills  relative  to  the  organization  of  public 
health  and  the  creation  of  the  special  revenues  neces- 
sary for  supplying  water  service  and  drainage  to  the 
population  and  for  meeting  the  other  demands  of  social 
prophylaxis. 

The  accomplished  results  and  the  beginnings  that  I 
have  indicated  are  sufficient  to  make  clear  the  views 
entertained  by  the  government  as  to  its  function  in 
respect  of  sanitary  enterprises,  which  are  truly  indis- 
pensable for  safeguarding  the  dearest  interests  of 
the  people  at  present  and  in  the  future. 


SOCIAL  LAWS 

Foreseeing  the  conflicts  that  would  spring  from  the 
social  problem  and  which  to-day  are  engaging  the 
whole  of  humanity;  taking  my  stand  upon  the  sound 
principle  of  justice  toward  and  protection  of  the  work- 
ing classes;  and  desiring  to  introduce  into  our  con- 
structive legislation  the  general  principles  that 
to-day  govern  juridical  relations  between  employers 
and  laborers,  I  submitted  to  the  national  congress, 
during  my  former  administration,  under  date  of 
October  4,  1915,  bills  relative  to  the  health  and  secur- 
ity of  working  men;  to  the  labor  of  women  and  chil- 
dren; to  obligatory  rest;  to  the  number  of  hours  of 
labor;  to  indemnity  for  accident;  to  labor  contracts; 
to  apprenticeship  contracts;  to  the  formation  of  in- 
dustrial and  labor  associations;  to  conciliation  and 


6O  PERU 

arbitration;    and  to  the  constitution  of  the  national 
board  of  labor. 

Of  these  bills,  the  following  have  become  laws:  the 
bill  that  fixes  the  obligation  of  the  employer  to  indem- 
nify the  laborer  who  may  be  the  victim  of  an  accident 
while  at  work;  the  one  that  regulates  the  labor  of 
women  and  children;  and  the  one  that  makes  provi- 
sion for  compulsory  Sunday  rest. 

The  hours  of  labor,  which  there  is  an  effort  to  limit 
everywhere,  for  the  double  purpose  of  preventing 
the  physical  exhaustion  of  the  laborer  and  of  guaran- 
teeing him  hours  of  rest  which  he  may  apply  advan- 
tageously to  the  cultivation  of  his  mind,  have  also 
been  reduced  in  the  country,  in  accord  with  the  most 
advanced  principles  of  social  legislation.  Indeed,  by 
a  decree  of  the  supreme  court  of  January  15  of  the 
present  year,  it  was  enacted  that  among  us  a  working 
day  of  eight  hours  should  be  established,  the  laborers 
of  Peru  thus  achieving  a  victory  for  which  many 
peoples  of  the  earth  are  still  anxiously  striving.  The 
decree  to  which  I  refer  is  the  following: 

The  president  of  the  republic,  realizing: 
I.    That  no  agreement  has  been  reached  between  certain  indus- 
trial establishments  and  their  employees  regarding  the  duration 
of  the  hours  of  labor  and  the  changes  sought  in  the  present  wages; 

2.  And  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  state,  in  its  own  establish- 
ments and  in  the  public  works  that  it  constructs,  to  fix  more 
compatible  conditions  between  the  interests  of  the  state  and 
those  of  its  operatives;  decrees  that : 

Article  I.  In  the  workshops  of  the  state,  on  its  railways,  in 
agricultural  and  industrial  establishments  and  on  public  works 
constructed  by  the  government,  the  time  of  daily  labor  shall  be 
fixed  at  eight  hours,  the  amount  of  present  salaries  being  main- 
tained. 


p  E  R  ti  61 

Article  II.  In  factories,  railways,  industrial,  agricultural  and 
mining  establishments  of  all  companies  and  private  individuals, 
the  length  of  the  duration  of  daily  work  shall  be  fixed  by  mutual 
consent  between  the  proprietors,  industrials  and  administrators, 
and  the  laborers. 

In  want  of  an  agreement  and  while  the  congress  is  legislating 
upon  the  particular,  the  time  of  the  duration  of  labor  shall  be 
subject  to  the  rule  of  eight  hours,  the  present  salaries  being  main- 
tained at  the  same  rate. 

Article  III.  Differences  that  may  arise  between  the  parties, 
whether  caused  by  the  increase  asked  in  wages  or  whether  caused 
by  the  new  rates  that  will  have  to  be  fixed  in  order  to  maintain 
their  amount,  will  be  determined  by  arbitrators  when  those  who 
are  interested  do  not  reach  any  direct  solution.  The  arbitrators 
shall  be  designated  one  for  each  party,  and  the  adjuster  shall  be 
appointed  by  the  president  of  the  Corte  Suprema  de  Justicia. 
The  point  in  dispute  must  be  settled  within  a  maximum  period 
of  one  week. 

Issued  in  Lima,  at  the  government  house,  this  fifteenth  day  of 
the  month  of  January,  1919. 

JOSE  PARDO.  M.  A.  VINELLI. 


I  ought  to  recall  with  satisfaction  that  the  former 
decree  of  my  government  was  issued  on  account  of  a 
general  strike  that  occurred  in  Lima,  which  was  dis- 
tinguished by  the  order  preserved  during  it  by  the 
laborers  and  by  the  respect  which  they  showed  at 
every  instant  for  the  authorities. 

The  natural  consequence  of  so  correct  an  attitude — 
which  permitted  events  to  develop  tranquilly,  without 
the  effusion  of  a  single  drop  of  blood — was  the  recog- 
nition on  the  part  of  the  public  authorities  of  the 
justice  of  the  claims  presented  and  the  consent  of  the 
employers  to  accept  them. 


62  PERU 

It  is  not  possible,  unfortunately,  to  make  a  similar 
statement  in  respect  of  the  shut-down  that  took  place 
last  May,  and  which,  in  contrast  with  the  former, 
was  characterized  by  the  use  which  its  organizers 
made  of  violence  in  the  most  extreme  forms,  to  such 
an  extent  that  the  public  authorities  were  compelled 
to  interfere,  as  the  only  means  of  preventing  the 
accomplishment  of  outrageous  assaults  upon  private 
property. 

Because  of  these  reprehensible  acts,  which  the  whole 
country  was  forced  to  condemn  without  reserve — and 
which  it  would  not  be  just  to  impute  to  the  people  of 
Lima  and  Callao,  but  to  the  pernicious  action  of  cer- 
tain agitators — there  occurred  certain  personal  injuries 
which  the  government  sincerely  deplored,  but  the 
responsibility  for  which  may  not  by  any  means  be 
attributed  to  it,  inasmuch  as  the  atittude  of  the 
authorities  was  maintained  within  the  strict  limits 
marked  out  for  it  by  its  most  elementary  duties  in 
respect  of  the  legitimate  defense  and  protection  of  the 
social  institutions. 

Since  the  activities  of  the  last  administration  were 
developed  at  the  same  time  that  the  European  war 
was  unfolding,  and  since  there  were  springing  up 
everywhere,  as  the  immediate  effects  of  the  defi- 
ciency in  production  and  the  scarcity  of  transporta- 
tion, difficulty  in  provisioning  the  population  and 
unlimited  advance  in  prices,  it  has  had  to  face  the 
different  phenomena  that  sprang  from  the  localization 
in  Perti  of  this  great  world  crisis  of  subsistence. 

Happily,  the  measures  adopted  by  the  constitutional 
government  had  such  efficiency  that  the  country  has 


PERU  63 

not  at  any  time  been  without  the  necessary  supplies 
for  her  own  consumption,  and  even  certain  articles, 
such  as  wheat  and  other  necessities  of  life,  have  been 
recently  imported  in  a  greater  proportion  than  they 
were  before  the  beginning  of  the  war. 

As  to  the  prices  of  articles  of  prime  necessity,  the 
proceeding  carried  into  effect,  and  which  consists  in 
the  direct  sale  of  them  by  the  state,  has  produced 
beneficial  results.  Indeed,  in  the  sixty  odd  distribut- 
ing points  established  by  the  Compania  Salinera  in 
behalf  of  the  government,  in  Lima,  Callao  and  other 
parts  of  the  country,  sugar,  rice,  cereals,  charcoal,  etc., 
have  been  sold  with  a  saving  for  the  consumer  that 
may  be  calculated  at  forty  per  cent.,  as  compared 
with  the  prices  charged  by  the  private  dealers,  and  at 
a  sum  exceeding  several  million  soles, 

During  the  last  six  months  only,  the  sales  made  by 
the  Compania  Salinera  amounted  to  the  sum  of 
$924,160. 

The  system  applied  by  the  administration  over 
which  I  presided  to  reduce  the  cost  of  living — which 
is  the  same  as  that  employed  to-day  in  the  United 
States  and  the  greatest  nations  of  Europe — possessed, 
besides  the  advantages  involved  in  the  suppression  of 
the  middleman,  the  indisputable  benefit  of  affecting, 
by  means  of  competition,  the  general  scale  of  prices, 
thus  reducing  them  perceptibly  throughout  the  whole 
range  of  the  market. 

So,  without  attacking  the  sources  of  national 
production  by  radical  and  destructive  measures,  but 
by  seeking  the  cooperation  of  the  industrials,  by  re- 
stricting or  prohibiting  their  exports  according  to  the 


64  PERU 

demands  of  consumption;  in  short,  by  exercising  a 
just  and  discreet  economic  policy,  it  has  been  possible 
to  render  the  provisioning  of  the  country  almost  nor- 
mal, and  to  prevent  food,  housing  and  clothing  from 
reaching  in  Lima  the  high  prices  which  they  have 
attained  in  the  greater  number  of  South  American 
capitals. 

The  working  classes  have  also  found  a  true  compen- 
sation for  the  high  cost  of  living  in  the  rise  in  wages 
and  salaries,  which  has  been  very  observable  in  Peru 
during  recent  times. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  economic  crisis  regarding 
which  I  occupied  myself  has  been  felt  and  is  still  felt 
among  us  chiefly  by  the  middle  class,  from  whose 
ranks  come  the  employees  who  are  great  aids  in  the 
commercial,  industrial  and  administrative  movements 
of  the  country.  However,  in  that  which  relates  to  the 
latter,  the  government  has  contributed  to  relieving 
their  difficult  situation  by  paying  each  month  a  per- 
centage of  their  back  salaries,  reduced  during  the  war, 
and  which  have  been  almost  wholly  made  up  to  them 
to  the  value  of  more  than  $1,264,640,  and  by  including 
in  the  projected  budget  for  1920,  which  was  already 
formulated  on  July  4,  a  total  item  that  would  permit 
the  introduction  in  their  incomes  of  certain  just 
modifications  in  accord  with  the  importance  and  re- 
sponsibility of  the  labors  with  which  they  are  charged. 

THE  REVOLUTION 

While  I  was  engaged  in  the  preparation  of  the 
annual  message  which  I  was  to  present  to  the  congress 
on  the  twenty-eighth  of  last  July;  that  is,  of  this 


PERU  65 

statement,  a  resume  of  the  acts  of  my  second  term  of 
administration;  and  in  arranging  for  the  early 
completion  of  certain  public  works  of  importance,  I 
was  surprised  by  the  early  morning  of  July  4,  during 
which  the  officers  of  the  palace  guard,  intrusted  with 
its  custody,  threw  wide  open  the  doors  for  the  free 
access  of  the  rebellious  soldiery  who,  under  the  orders 
of  military  leaders  of  high  rank,  made  me  a  prisoner,  to 
shut  me  within  the  walls  of  the  Panoptico.  At  the 
same  time  that  these  events  were  occurring,  other 
forces  of  the  army  and  the  navy  rebelled  against 
constitutional  order  and  took  to  the  government 
palace  senor  Augusto  B.  Leguia,  to  invest  him  with  the 
title  of  provisional  president  of  the  republic,  with 
which  he  to-day  exercises  dictatorship,  after  having 
dissolved  the  national  congress. 

The  grounds  of  this  odious  attack  have  been  set 
forth  in  a  different  manner  by  the  dictator  and  his 
ministers  in  recent  documents. 

According  to  sefior  Leguia,  as  was  said  in  his 
telegraphic  circular  of  July  4, 

the  democracy  has  overthrown  the  most  ignominious  tyranny 
that  Peru  has  ever  had. 

According  to  the  minister  of  foreign  relations — the 
celebrated  chancellor,  to  whose  sad  policy  are  attrib- 
uted the  great  territorial  mutilations  suffered  by  the 
republic  for  the  advantage  of  Brazil  and  Bolivia  in 
1909: 

the  people  of  Peru  have  not  been  able  to  resign  themselves  to 
having  the  popular  vote  unrecognized  and  to  consenting  to  the 
dictatorial  acts  practised  recently  by  the  administration  that  has 
just  terminated. 


66  PERU 

This  was  affirmed  with  inconceivable  audacity  in  a 
circular  addressed  to  the  honorable  diplomatic  corps 
resident  in  Lima,  with  the  deliberate  intention  of 
misleading  the  minds  of  its  distinguished  members — a 
vain  and  childish  design,  inasmuch  as  they,  being 
accredited  to  the  capital  of  Perti  and  not  to  Peking, 
are  very  well  acquainted  with  the  cultivated  and 
patriotic  policy  of  the  recent  government. 

According  to  the  minister  of  justice : 

the  desire  of  the  nation  has  imposed  the  obedience  that  is  due  her, 
thus  safeguarding  herself  from  a  governmental  plan  which  was 
already  in  operation  for  ignoring  her,  as  was  of  common  knowl- 
edge. 

Here  it  is  no  longer  in  the  presence  of  foreign  diplo- 
mats, but  of  the  magistrates  who  constitute  the 
supreme  court  of  the  country,  who  live  more  in  contact 
with  our  political  life,  who  have  been  taking  part  in 
the  electoral  processes  and  who  have  also  been 
observing  the  frauds  committed  by  the  partisans  of 
senor  Leguia,  with  whom  an  effort  is  being  made  to 
adulterate  the  truth. 

Last  of  all,  according  to  the  minister  of  government 
of  the  dictatorship,  the  coup  d'etat  of  July  4  was  not  a 
pretorian  assault,  but  a  national  movement  inspired  by 
a  noble  aspiration  to  accomplish  constitutional  reforms 
that  would  establish  in  Perti  a  real  democracy.  This 
he  says  textually  in  the  first  consideration  of  his 
decree  entitled  Reformas  constitutionales. 

As  may  be  seen,  falsehoods  are  once  more  the  only 
reasons  of  usurpers  in  Peru. 

To  have  suppressed  a  newspaper  only  when  it  put 
itself  at  the  service  of  the  enemies  of  social  order,  after 


PERU  67 

having  supported  them  for  three  years  and  a  half, 
during  which  it  systematically  carried  on  its  attacks 
upon  my  person,  having  recourse  to  all  the  insults  and 
calumnies  imaginable,  and  after  having  appealed  to  a 
legal  process  foreseen  and  provided  for  in  article  IV  of 
the  law  of  habeas  corpus,  when  the  supreme  court 
ordered  the  opening  of  the  printing  house  of  El  Tiempo, 
are  acts  that  converted  my  government  into  an 
"ignominious  tyranny,"  in  the  words  of  the  dictator 
and  his  ministers. 

If,  however,  this  be,  according  to  such  scrupulous 
citizens,  the  qualificative  merited  by  my  efforts  in 
defense  of  threatened  society,  what  will  they  call  the 
great  crimes,  the  greatest  that  can  be  committed  in  the 
political  life  of  a  people,  and  of  which  they  have  been 
guilty  since  the  early  morning  of  July  4? 

What  name  must  they  give  to  the  enterprise  to 
which  they  were  devoted,  through  whole  months,  of 
inducing  leaders  and  officers  and  soldiers  to  commit 
the  crime  of  treason,  by  misleading  their  judgment 
with  false  affirmations  and  by  covering  up  the  true 
motives  of  the  revolutionary  movement? 

How  are  they  to  qualify  their  pertinacious  campaign 
whose  success  placed  the  national  army  and  navy 
in  the  most  shameful,  contradictory  and  unqualifiable 
of  situations  by  dragging  down,  on  February  4,  1914, 
the  president  who,  by  the  insinuations  of  a  wretched 
and  immoral  politician,  was  going  to  attack  the 
majesty  of  the  congress,  and  by  overthrowing  on 
July  4,  1919,  their  constitutional  president,  in  order  to 
set  up  a  dictator  who,  by  the  suggestions  of  the  same 


68  P  E  R  tl 

politician,  carries  forward  and  consummates  the 
assault?  Probably  they  will  exhibit  their  conduct  as  a 
manifestation  of  the  profound  regard  which  they  feel 
for  the  military  institution,  so  profound  that  they  did 
not  desist  from  their  efforts  until  they  made  it  play 
the  part  which,  without  doubt,  they  will  deem  the 
most  honorable  and  worthy  of  the  glorious  traditions 
of  the  army  and  navy  of  Peru. 

To  dissolve  the  congress;  destroy  printing  estab- 
lishments; alter  the  character  of  the  form  of 
government;  provoke  plebescites  in  accord  with 
methods  that  have  been  practised  by  tyrannical 
imperialisms;  assault  and  sack  domiciles,  without 
holding  the  known  perpetrators  accountable;  order 
trials  stopped;  and  wrest  from  the  supreme  court 
the  functions  with  which  the  law  intrusts  it:  all 
this  that  the  nation  contemplates  rilled  with  stupor — 
how  will  it  be  christened  by  the  men  of  the 
military  regime?  Will  they  perhaps  find  in  the 
lexicon  words  that  will  faithfully  express  the  meaning 
of  such  actions? 

It  is  regrettable  that  the  minister  of  justice  has  not 
made  known  to  the  public  the  details  of  the  govern- 
mental plan  to  which  reference  is  made.  I,  for  my 
part,  can  say  with  the  firmness  of  a  conscience  strictly 
in  harmony  with  the  truth  and  with  all  the  authority 
that  belongs  to  one  who  has  never  deceived  his 
country,  that  such  a  plan  has  not  existed  even  for  an 
instant,  and  that,  consequently,  it  could  not  have  been 
on  foot  or  within  the  scope  of  public  knowledge.  I 
summon  the  members  of  the  dictatorship,  who  have 
to-day  a  magnificent  opportunity  to  put  me  to  con- 


P  E  R  tj  69 

fusion  with  their  proofs,  to  deny  my  categorical 
declarations. 

The  only  modification  of  the  existing  order  that  I 
permitted  myself  to  submit  to  the  congress  was  that  of 
setting  forward  the  date  of  inauguration  to  the  second 
or  fourth  of  the  present  month  of  August,  for  the 
purpose — unquestionably  quite  proper — of  enabling 
the  new  administration  to  begin  its  labors  simul- 
taneously with  the  ordinary  legislative  session,  as 
happened  in  a  former  period.  This  was,  I  repeat,  the 
only  plan  that  I  had  conceived,  and  it  is  quite  different, 
without  a  doubt,  from  the  one  attributed  to  me  by  my 
political  adversaries,  as  also  it  is  radically  different 
from  the  one  worked  out  by  the  president  of  1912  in 
order  to  remain  in  power. 

The  truth  is,  however,  that  the  revolutionary 
conspiracy  existed  long  before  the  first  electoral  vote 
began.  This  of  which  I  speak  is  better  known  to  the 
present  minister  of  justice  than  it  is  to  me. 

What  plan  of  government  could  have  been  traced 
out  when  the  subversive  movement  of  Anc6n  started 
on  August  22,  1918,  and  throughout  the  time  that 
elapsed  afterward,  during  which  each  of  the  members 
of  the  constitutional  and  Leguista  committees  has 
been  an  active  element  of  propaganda  against  the 
reputation  of  the  government  and  an  agent  of  cor- 
ruption with  the  leaders,  officers  and  men  of  the  army 
and  navy? 

The  governmental  plan  imagined  by  the  enemies  of 
justice  is  nothing  therefore  but  another  affirmation, 
wholly  void  of  truth,  and  intended  to  deceive  those 


70  PERU 

who  wish  to  be  deceived  in  order  to  obtain  rewards 
and  elevations  in  recompense  for  their  treason. 

The  government,  in  the  matter  of  electoral  politics, 
had  marked  out  for  itself  a  truly  inflexible  line  of 
conduct.  The  idea  of  a  convention  of  the  parties — 
which  it  favored  with  the  greatest  loftiness  and 
patriotism,  because  it  was  convinced  that  this  method 
of  harmonizing  interests  would  have  strengthened,  and 
added  prestige  to,  the  nation  abroad,  in  these  excep- 
tional times  of  international  life,  and  would  have 
assured  the  triumph  of  the  true  collective  aspirations 
in  its  internal  regime — being  discarded,  it  resolved  to 
develop  its  action  upon  the  principles  of  the  most 
absolute  rectitude  by  giving  ample  guaranties  to  all 
the  candidates.  I  was  not  only  compelled  to  follow 
this  policy  through  loyalty  to  my  duties  as  a  ruler,  but 
also  as  an  especial  consequence  of  the  distinguished 
personages  who  formed  the  cabinets  presided  over  by 
Doctor  German  Arenas  and  General  Zuloaga,  who  did 
me  the  honor  to  serve  with  me  in  the  labors  of  the 
administration  under  the  conviction  that  there  would 
exist  the  most  complete  electoral  freedom;  and,  more 
singularly  still,  through  consideration  for  Doctors 
Federico  Panizo  and  Augusto  Arrese,  who  afterward 
entered  the  ministry  under  the  express  condition  that 
the  government  should  respect  the  popular  will, 
whatever  the  direction  it  might  take. 

This  means  therefore  that  the  efforts  of  the  executive 
in  respect  of  the  electoral  process  did  not  correspond 
merely  to  a  political  direction  freely  taken,  but  also  to 
an  engagement  of  honor  existing  between  the  pres- 
ident of  the  reoublic  and  his  counselors;  and,  in  view 


P  E  R  tJ  71 

of  this  condition  of  affairs,  sefior  Leguia  reached  Peru, 
entered  Lima  and  received  all  kinds  of  public  mani- 
festations from  his  friends,  without  encountering  the 
mobs  that  are  now  sacking  the  homes  of  his  political 
adversaries  and  sowing  terror  everywherejn  order^to 
impose  silence. 

The  preliminary  steps  of  the  election  being  taken 
without  the  least  show  of  coercion  on  the  part  of  the 
authorities,  the  meetings  of  the  greatest  contributors 
could  be  held. freely  throughout  the  republic.  In  some 
of  them,  as  in  Lima  and  Callao,  the  lists  made  up  by 
senor  Leguia  triumphed;  in  others,  were  organized 
dual  committees  in  opposition  to  those  formed  by  the 
supporters  of  sefior  Aspillaga;  and  in  others,  finally, 
the  upholders  of  the  candidate  of  the  civil  party  were 
victorious.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that  if  there  was 
bloodshed  on  account  of  the  meeting  of  these  assem- 
blies in  certain  parts  of  the  country,  this  was  due, 
almost  always,  to  the  provocative  and  violent  action 
of  the  candidates  affiliated  with  the  constitutional 
party  that  supported  sefior  Leguia,  and  who,  obeying 
doubtless  a  definite  plan,  exerted  themselves  that 
there  should  not  fail  to  be  such.  In  Chota,  in  Otuzco 
and  in  Pataz,  the  unfortunate  subprefects  and 
gendarmes  who,  complying  with  instructions  of  the 
government,  tried  to  maintain  order,  were  vilely 
assassinated  by  bands  of  the  political  organization 
sarcastically  termed  "constitutional." 

To  this  attitude  of  the  public  authorities,  of  positive 
respect  for  electoral  freedom,  sefior  Leguia  replied  by 
maintaining  in  his  newspapers  the  most  violent 
campaign  of  infamy  and  calumny  against  the  govern- 


72  PERU 

ment.  Without  doubt  it  was  an  effort  to  form  what 
Doctor  Cornejo  calls  "the  revolutionary  environment." 

It  is  unnecessary,  however,  for  me  to  enter  into 
further  considerations.  The  public  conscience  is  now 
formed;  the  country  knows  that  I  invoked  the 
patriotism  of  the  party  leaders  in  order  that  a  conven- 
tion might  be  held,  subject  to  the  rules  that  they 
themselves  might  desire  to  establish,  and  that  this 
disinterested  and  sincere  purpose  failed  in  the  face  of 
group  selfishness  and  personal  ambitions;  that  I 
guaranteed  the  freedom  of  election  in  so  absolute  a 
form — as  must  be  loyally  recognized  and  proclaimed 
by  any  of  the  least  impassioned  of  the  opposition 
itself — that  senor  Leguia  was  enabled  boldly  to  stuff 
the  ballot  in  many  parts  of  the  republic  by  means  of 
the  most  barefaced  fraud ;  and  even  in  Lima,  with  the 
manifest  complicity  of  the  committee  on  suffrage,  and 
before  the  astonished  gaze  of  the  whole  city,  it  was 
possible  for  him,  by  appealing  to  the  same  means,  to 
offer  many  reports  of  contested  cases  at  variance  with 
the  truth;  that,  in  short,  I  developed  a  policy  that  was 
for  the  country  a  promise  of  peace  and  a  revelation 
that  there  existed  on  my  part  no  crooked  design  of 
foisting  a  successor. 

When  the  electoral  campaign,  properly  speaking, 
was  concluded,  there  remained,  pending  merely  the 
qualification  of  those  elected,  a  function  that,  accord- 
ing to  the  law,  fell  to  the  lot  of  the  supreme  court, 
whose  decisions  must  determine  inevitably  the 
judgment  and  resolution  of  the  congress,  inasmuch  as 
they  were  based  upon  organisms  that  had  served  both 
for  the  congressional  and  the  presidential  elections. 


PERU  73 

It  would  not  be  admissible  to  suppose  that  the 
chambers  would  validate  votes  declared  void  by  the 
court,  nor  that  they  would  have  dared  to  consider  as 
valueless  votes  that  had  received  the  approval  of  the 
court. 

This  means,  consequently,  that  the  qualification  of 
the  presidential  elections  was,  strictly  speaking, 
intrusted  to  the  republic's  highest  tribunal  of  justice, 
which,  in  pronouncing  its  opinion  upon  the  cases 
brought  to  its  cognizance  by  the  candidates  for 
senatorships  and  deputyships,  was  weeding  out  the 
lists  presented  by  senores  Leguia  and  Aspillaga. 

Thus,  up  to  July  3,  there  had  been  presented  to  the 
supreme  court  thirty-five  pleas  for  voidance,  and 
seven  cases  had  been  decided,  two  that  dealt  with  the 
political  friends  of  senor  Leguia  and  three  that 
favored  the  partisans  of  senor  Aspillaga  being  ap- 
proved and  two  wholly  annulled.  That  is,  up  to  the 
eve  of  the  revolutionary  movement,  senor  Leguia  had 
lost  by  the  decision  of  the  supreme  court,  whose 
probity  and  rectitude  the  whole  country  has  re- 
cognized, 14,546  votes. 

The  solution  of  the  presidential  electoral  problem 
ought  then  to  have  defined  itself  with  absolute  clear- 
ness. As  in  the  elections  of  May,  there  had  been  some 
scattering  votes,  and  as  the  court  was  considerably 
reducing  the  number  -of  votes  for  the  opposing  candi- 
dates, the  congress  was  going  to  come  face  to  face  with 
the  case  provided  for  in  article  82  of  the  national 
constitution,  thus  having  to  choose  between  senores 
Leguia  and  Aspillaga  as  president,  since  they  were 
the  ones  who  had  received  the  highest  number  of 


74  PERU 

votes,  without  either  of  them  obtaining  an  absolute 
majority. 

I  did  not  have  a  majority  of  my  own  in  the  congress 
in  order  to  carry  out  any  plan.  However,  as  I  had 
pursued  a  policy  of  absolute  loyalty  toward  the 
parties  that  had  elevated  me  to  the  presidency,  and, 
above  all,  as  my  efforts  were  in  harmony  with  manifest 
national  interests,  according  to  the  formulas  of  sound 
sense  and  effectiveness,  it  was  not  difficult  for  me  to 
count  upon  the  support  of  the  liberal  party,  upon  that 
of  independent  groups  in  the  chambers,  upon  the  votes 
of  the  old  constitutional  and  democratic  representa- 
tives and  upon  the  loyalty  of  the  civil  party,  all  these 
being  elements  that  constituted  a  considerable 
majority,  which  for  the  last  four  years  has  directed  the 
affairs  of  state  with  the  wisdom  and  patriotism  that 
the  nation  must  recognize. 

I  had  this  majority,  as  it  is  possessed  by  all 
parliamentary  governments — whose  success  depends 
upon  the  action  of  political  forces  and  not  upon  the 
imposition  of  dictatorial  wills — because  my  policy  was 
not  personal,  but  genuinely  national,  and  because  I 
did  not  seek  unconstitutional  support,  such  as  the 
dictatorship  is  trying  to  secure  by  means  of  the 
organization  of  a  new  congress.  Far  from  this,  on 
many  occasions  and  in  affairs  of  grave  moment,  that 
majority  forced  upon  the  executive  power  decisions 
very  different  from  those  he  had  sought. 

All  that  I  am  affirming  was  very  well  known  to 
senor  Leguia;  but  he  knew  something  more :  he  knew 
from  the  lips  of  representatives  attached  to  the  policy 
of  the  government  that  the  administration  had  not 


PERU  75 

made  them  any  suggestion  that  they  should  fail  to 
comply  with  their  constitutional  duties  and  that  it  did 
not  exercise  the  least  influence  in  the  direction  of 
hindering  the  free  vote  of  the  congress. 

It  was  then  that  senor  Leguia,  on  arriving  at  the 
conviction  that  the  executive  did  not  desire  anything 
less  than  that  the  electoral  process  should  be  carried 
out  in  the  terms  of  the  political  charter,  and  on  seeing 
that  the  ranks  of  his  friends  in  the  parliament  were 
increasing,  in  proportion  as  the  day  of  his  inauguration 
drew  near;  on  persuading  himself,  in  short,  that  the 
congress  was  going  to  elect  him,  resolved  to  take  a 
revolutionary  step. 

It  did  not  mean  that  the  conspiracy  had  been 
prepared  with  thought  fixed  upon  the  idea  that  the 
congress  might  be  capable  of  proclaiming  a  person 
different  from  senor  Leguia  or  senor  Aspillaga,  nor 
that  the  flag  which  the  present  dictator  proposed  to  fly, 
in  rebelling  against  the  authority  of  the  legislative 
power,  had  suddenly  fallen  from  his  hands.  What  he 
was  interested  in  was  the  disappearance  of  the  con- 
gress; and,  with  or  without  a  pretext,  he  would  have 
consummated  the  attack. 

The  revolution  was  not  waged  against  the  president, 
but  against  the  congress,  from  which  senor  Leguia  did 
not  wish  to  receive  the  presidential  investiture,  because 
this  fact  would  have  made  it  impossible  for  him  to 
dissolve  it;  and  he  did  not  desire  to  govern,  as  I 
governed  for  four  years,  with  a  majority  resulting 
from  a  patriotic  conjunction  of  political  forces,  but 
with  another,  constituted  by  unconditional  elements. 
It  was  on  this  account  that  he  resolved  upon  revolu- 


76  PERU 

tion:  not  to  save  the  country  from  an  "ignominious 
dictatorship,"  which  never  existed  at  any  time  while  I 
was  at  the  head  of  public  affairs,  but  in  order  to 
dissolve  the  congress  and  form  another  new  one  to  his 
entire  satisfaction. 

In  order  to  carry  out  this  nefarious  plan  it  has  made 
no  difference  that  he  had  to  commit  the  gravest 
assaults  that  could  be  made  upon  a  civilized  nation, 
restore  partisan  leadership  in  Peru  and  plunge  the 
nation  into  the  most  profound  disgrace  abroad,  at  the 
very  moment  when  she  was  presenting  to  the  free 
peoples  of  the  world  a  just  demand  for  her  territorial 
revindication. 

Compatriots: 

I  have  given  you  an  account  of  the  principal  acts  of 
my  administration  during  the  period  of  1915-1919,  in 
which,  for  the  second  time,  I  had  the  signal  honor  to 
guide  your  destiny;  and  I  have  revealed  to  you  with 
absolute  truth  what  is  the  origin  of  the  high  treason  of 
which  the  constitutional  institutions  of  Peru  are 
victims. 

Whether  surrendering  the  symbol  of  supreme  power 
in  the  presence  of  the  representatives  of  the  nation,  in 
the  refined  ceremony  of  a  free  democracy,  or  having  it 
wrested  from  me  by  the  brutal  hand  of  a  pretorian 
soldiery,  in  the  service  of  a  legicidal  ambition,  the 
condition  of  my  spirit  is  the  same :  it  is  one  of  absolute 
serenity,  because,  since  all  my  acts  have  been  ad- 
dressed to  the  welfare  of  Perti  and  have  served  no 
other  end  than  the  national  interests,  in  the  rigid 


p  E  R  fj  77 

realm  of  honor  and  duty  in  which  I  have  moved  during 
all  my  public  life,  I  can  await,  with  my  forehead 
lifted  high,  the  justifying  verdict  of  honorable  men. 

JOSE  PARDO. 
Coldn,  August  18,  191 Q. 


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